I am helping a researcher who is looking for data on childhood obesity.
He has used data form the CCHS but would like to have data for younger children (the CCHS deals with people 12 and older). I know that the Canadian Health Measures Survey (CHMS) is interested in people from 3 to 79 years old, but I could not find the data dictionary on Nesstar or anywhere else. Also, the researcher has been told that there are other survey(s) conducted by Health Canada that could provide some data on childhood obesity but so far I have not been able to unearth anything else that was recent.
So I have essentially two questions:
1. Can someone provide me with the data dictionary or at least a detailed list of variables for the CHMS Master File, ideally for cycle 4?
2. Does anyone know of other Canadian surveys that would have data on childhood obesity (other than the CCHS, the CHMS or the discontinued National Population Health Survey)?
Answer 1
The CHMS did not produce a PUMF for this survey, and the Masterfile metadata has not been coded in Nesstar yet. We will add this to our list of coding priorities. I’ve reached out to the Health Statistics Division to see if there is a zero-count data dictionary that they can provide for cycle 4 of the CHMS.
For the CHMS, there is no codebook for the entire cycle, its broken down into components.
Answer 2
[This is d]iscontinued as well, but I’d recommend taking a look at the National Longitudinal Survey of Children and Youth (NLSCY) http://www23.statcan.gc.ca/
Yes, you are right, we have PUMFs for the first 3 cycles only, after that it would have to be the RDC’s master files. I did not remember that there were so many cycles (8) and that the last one (2008-2009) was still relatively recent. So given the richness of this data it may indeed be interesting for the researcher.
