Thursday, October 26, 2017

Business Stats at Sub-provincial Level

Question:
I’m help a graduate-level class that is working on a feasibility study for a new downtown grocery store. The instructor would like to find things like market share, customer numbers, sales by industry, and so on.

Apart from location counts by NAICS code and employee size at the CMA-level, everything we’ve located is national or provincial.

Are there sources for more detailed information, apart from CDER or custom tabs?

Answer:

You may find some of the publications from the Centre for the Study of Commercial Activity at Ryerson useful.

I don’t know if this helps, but for sales data, employee counts and other company/industry data one place we refer students to is the D&B Million Dollar Database. You can search by SIC (e.g., 54110000 for grocery stores) and limit by geography (e.g., Manitoba / Winnipeg). Doesn’t provide all the data you want in your case, of course.

Area of 2006 Dissemination Area

Question:
I am assisting a researcher who is looking to determine the area of 2006 Dissemination Areas. Does this exist as a statistical product?

I noticed that the shapefiles have a generated “shape_area” field and am wondering if anyone knows if this field is reliable, or if it poses a Modifiable Areal Units Problem (MAUP)?

Answer:
If you don't want to use GIS software, I'm pleased to say that, once again, GeoSuite comes to the rescue.  There's a DAarea field in GeoSuite that gives area in km2.  According to the help file "Land area data are unofficial and are provided for the sole purpose of calculating population density."

Thursday, October 12, 2017

Tuition Costs by Institution

Question:
A researcher is looking for recent (2016/17 and 2017/18) data from Tuition and Living Accommodation Costs (TLAC). Stats Can has released summary tables from the latest survey, but they only list costs by province, and she needs it by institution. I was able to locate data from 1993-2015 in Odesi but nothing from the past two years. Are there plans to release a PUMF for the latest years, and if so, when?

Answer 1:
You might check out: https://www.univcan.ca/universities/facts-and-stats/tuition-fees-by-university/  … I noted that the source is Statistics Canada. 

Answer 2:
 there are no PUMFs planned for TLAC data.  From subject matter: “We don’t produce any PUMF for TLAC, only standard tables.”

Now, the years your request caught my eye.  I just released the 2017/18 data* last week and sent a notification to the list.  Odesi are able to extract the tables for their users and release through their channels.  The data has been available since October 5th 2017 on the FTP site.

*Tuition and Living Accommodation Costs (TLAC) for 2017-18 (ver09) are now available on the EFT site.

 EFT: /MAD_DLI_IDD_DAM/root/other_autres/3123_TLAC_FSS/

Wednesday, October 11, 2017

CCHS Documentation for 2014

Question
I have received a request for the following Canadian Community Health Survey documents:

CCHS 2014 Derived Variables Documentation
Canadian Community Health Survey – Errata (updated June 2015)
These are both listed on this page: http://www23.statcan.gc.ca/imdb-bmdi/document/3226_D75_T1-V4-eng.htm

I am presuming that the Derived Variables Documentation is the same as the Derived Variable (DV) Specifications document that I found on the EFT and , but would like confirmation of that.

Answer
You are correct, the Derived Variable specs you found on the EFT is the correct document.  As for the errata, I am placing the CCHS 2015 errata on the EFT site under the documentation folder.  

As per subject matter: “Please note that this errata does not replace the existing errata for the 2000-2014 CCHS, rather it is an additional errata. Going forward, all errata items for 2015 onward will appear in this second document. This document will be updated on an ongoing basis. Please be sure to keep both the 2000-2014 and 2015+ documents.”