Wednesday, August 30, 2006

Reason for number in name of Indian reserves

Question

I have a student looking for 1981 population data for two Indian reserves in BC. I have the data for her, but I just want to check one detail. Why is there a number in the name of the Indian reserve in the Standard Geographical Classification. For example, there is a "1" after Skidegate (Skidegate 1) and a "1" after Gitanmaax (Gitanmaax 1). I can't seem to find anything in any documentation that explains this. Since Skidegate 1 seems to be the only Skidegate listed, and it's in the right place on the map, I'm assuming that it's the Skidegate we want, but what's with the "1"?

Answers

1. There is a list of all the CSD names from the 1981 census, extracted from the Geography tape file for 1981, at:
http://prod.library.utoronto.ca:8090/datalib/codebooks/c/cc81/csd81.lst
The numbering seems to differentiate Indian reserves that are in different locations, but belong to the same band/nation.

Some bands/nations had more than one reserve, others seem to only have had one, or at least only one with a permanent resident population. Eg Switsemalph in census division 39 has Switsemalph 3, 6 and 7 (I have no idea what happened to 1, 2, and 4 - perhaps they were simply not inhabited at the time the census was conducted?)

Maybe someone else can explain the numbering, but no logical relationship leaps out at me from the Indian reserve name/number combinations in that list. The numbers are certainly not unique within a CD, although the numbers are unique within a name.

2. The number was given at a time when the Indian Reserve was in parts and the numbering has become part of the official name. In this case, the official name of the reserve is Skidegate 1. If you go on the Community Profile on STC website and write the name Skidegate, it will bring you to the information for Skidegate 1. Other reserves have also numbers as part of their official name.

Tuesday, August 29, 2006

Updated Products - ITS 2005

International Travel Survey 2005 Q4

Records relate to the activities of Canadians travelling outside the country and visitors to Canada; port of entry; Canadian residents; travellers; non-residents; country of residence; expenditures; length of stay; type of transportation; purpose of trip; accommodation used; places visited; expenditure by categories; age groups.

International travel data are collected in four flows: Canadian returning from the USA; Canadians returning from other countries; visitors from the USA to Canada; visitors from other countries to Canada.

FTP: /dli/its/2005/data
WEB: http://www.statcan.ca/english/Dli/Data/Ftp/its/its2005.htm

Wednesday, August 23, 2006

Youth court data from CCHS

Question

Is it possible, please, to get an updated version of the Recidivism data table from the Youth court survey? As far as I can tell, the latest we have is the table with data ending 1999/2000, which was distributed in 2001. That filename was YCSrecid.ivt.

Answer

The recidivism tables have been terminated and there is no other product available at this time. The manager for YCS is working on having this data possibly available next year. In the meantime, there is nothing, sorry.

Median ages in Newfoundland

Question

I'm trying to find median age (or data that can be used to calculate median age) by census division for Newfoundland, for the 1991 & 1996 censuses. Any suggestions?

Answer

I could not find a simple answer for you and therefore I asked the division for help. Following is their response:

There are no standard products available for 1996 and 1991 which include median age at the CD level. I have explored the possibility of using data to calculate the median age but have been advised that this is not an option, as the data that is produced has been rounded and the results would not be accurate. In order to produce median age, the person would have to be working with unrounded data and single years of age, and as you are aware we do not release unrounded data due to confidentiality
issues. The only other option available would be produce custom tabulations at a fee to the client.

Wednesday, August 16, 2006

Canadian Internet Use Survey

Question

Is there a proposed release date for the release of a pumf from the Canadian Internet use survey listed in yesterday's Daily? I don't see it on: http://www.statcan.ca/english/Dli/pumfdates.htm.

Answer

I just spoke with someone in Science, Innovation and Electronic Information Division and she said that the proposed release date for a pumf is January/February 2007 for the Canadian Internet Use Survey. She also mentioned that you could contact Larry McKeown (613-951-2582, larry.mckeown@statcan.ca) for further information.

Labour Force Data from 1964-Present

Question

An economics graduate student would like to find monthly Labour Force data, specifically Average Hours worked, and number of people employed, dating back to 1964. He has found the LFS data via CANSIM dating back to 1976, and earlier data appears only to be available annually.

Is anyone aware of another source?

Answers

1. StatsCan has monthly hours worked data from 1966 to 1975 on paper only. It is based on the very survey questionnaire which is not comparable to the survey from 1976 to present.

2. Stats Can print publication 71-001 has hours worked as a categorical variable and number of people employed, as far back as 1950, at least in all the monthly issues I checked. You would need to compute mid-points and multiply by the number of employed in each category, to come up with a monthly overall average, but with some key-punching grunt work, Excel will compute a monthly average nicely.

Thursday, August 10, 2006

Infodep income trends in Canada

Question

I've been trying to access Income trends in Canada 2004 at the Depository site, but there seem to be no links--to any of the years. Am I missing something?

Any chance of these being made available to DLI to put on the FTP site?

Answers

1. This title is a DSP item but on CDs so therefore not available free on the web site. Of course I can't find it but when they switched to 'free for web' items there was a note saying that paper, CD and other formats, not web, were not free. To get the CDs, Depository Libraries only have to check them off on the weekly checklists.

2. As the product is already available through the DSP program, the DLI cannot assume it in its collection. As products in the DLI collection have restrictions on access, this would reduce the number of people who can freely access the product. It is a simply a matter of ordering the CD-ROM from the DSP program and it can be used by all users in DSP-related institutions (university and municipal libraries).

Number of dwellings in multi-unit buildings

Question

I have a student who wants to know how many dwellings there are, in Canada and in the US, that are part of multi-unit buildings. The types of dwellings include condos, apartments, dorms and retirement homes.

For Canadian numbers, I looked in the census through E-Stat and the closest I came to what she wants is the number of dwellings for: Apartment, building that has five or more storeys, number of occupied private dwellings and Apartment, building that has fewer than five storeys, number of occupied private dwellings.

My question is: how are rooms in retirement homes or university dorms counted and the results published? Are they simply included with the number of apartments? And do you know if rooms in retirement homes or university dorms are counted the same way in the US? The results in FedStat imply so.

Answer

Retirement homes, etc.. are considered collective dwellings : In the Census, a collective dwelling refers to a dwelling of a commercial, institutional or communal nature. Examples are lodging or rooming houses, hotels, motels, tourist homes, nursing homes, hospitals, staff residences, communal quarters, work camps, jails, missions, and group homes.

Special attention must be placed to consider that the Census records the usual place of residence. University dorms tend to be temporary residences for students and therefore they will more than likely not be showing up in Census results. University students have often returned home by the time the Census takes place and they are counted in their usual place of residence - their parents house, etc.....

The only results for collective dwellings that were published by Statistics Canada are found at the following link:
http://www12.statcan.ca/english/census01/Products/Analytic/companion/coll/contents.cfm

Tuesday, August 8, 2006

Canadian Centre for Justice Statistics Needed

Question

Is there any chance of more up-to-date tables from the CCJS, especially the Common offences, municipal police forces tables? The latest we seem to have are for 2000.

Answer

It appears that the table you are referring to is Municipal Police Forces, 1977-2000. This table is part of a terminated series of tables - we will not be receiving updated information.

Currently, the DLI collection is up-to-date based on the information received from the division.

Updated Products - SARTRE / TAM

Small Area Retail Trade Estimates (SARTRE) - 2002 and 2003 data

Small area retail trade estimates (SARTRE) is a system of developing user-defined tabulations of retail sales and number of locations as low as five-digit North American Industrial Classification (NAICS), for incorporated retailers with forward sortation area (FSA) levels of geographical detail. These data are derived by integrating survey data on chain stores with tax data (for non-chain retailers).

WEB: http://www.statcan.ca/english/Dli/Data/Ftp/sartre/sartre04.htm
FTP: /ftp/dli/sartre

Travel Activities and Motivation Survey (TAMS) - 1999

The Travel Activities and Motivation Survey (TAMS) was conducted by Statistics Canada on behalf of the Canadian Tourism Commission and four provincial and territorial agencies responsible for tourism. The types of information collected are: areas of Canada travelled to in the previous two years and travel intentions for the next two years; reasons non-travellers do not travel; participation in recreational and entertainment activities; reasons for travelling in Canada and to Canadian provinces and territories; types of accommodation used while travelling; sources of travel planning information; and impressions of parts of Canada as travel destinations.

WEB: http://www.statcan.ca/english/Dli/Data/Ftp/tams.htm
FTP: /dli/tams/1999

Hourly wages and Health Care Expenses

Question

A student here is looking for a single source (or a continuous series) that would allow her to see hourly wage data, by specific occupation (e.g., farm labourer, clerk, carpenter, etc.), from the 1930s to the present. By preference, these data would be annual - but whatever is available would be welcomed.

The census data include annual earnings, but not hourly rates, by occupation.

Answers

1. There is some wage data in: B.R. Mitchell, International Historical Statistics: The Americas, 1750-2000. The series given are for "average daily wages" for 1901 -- 1958 and average monthly wages in manufacturing from 1958 to present. Perhaps a useful starting point?

2. The best source I found for wages by occupation was through the Labour Force Survey and the Survey on Employment, Payrolls and Hours.

Unfortunately, neither survey offers data for the years you request. Due to methodological changes in the LFS, I know that they have not applied the new methods to older data - which explains why you will not find a comparative series spanning the years you seek.

Wednesday, August 2, 2006

Investment Data

Question

I have a fourth year finance student working on an assignment where he is researching diversification in mutual funds. He is looking for the number of stocks included in any given fund and the weight of each stock in the fund.

As far as I can see, we do not have anything that will do this. We have Datastream, but it does not seem to include mutual fund data -- unless I am missing it. If I am, please let me know.

I have suggested globefund.com, Yahoo! Finance's Mutual Funds Center (http://finance.yahoo.com/funds), or www.morningstar.com, all of which include profiles that give some picture of fund diversification, but certainly not a complete picture. I believe that one could get a better picture if one paid for a deeper level of access.

If students here are being asked to do these types of assignments, it seems that we should be thinking about providing access to this type of data. So, my question is: If Datastream does not do this, is there a product that we can look at that does?

Answers

1. The mutual fund prospectus and the annual and semi-annual or quarterly reports will give this information, but that would necessitate going to each one individually, although at least, mutual fund companies tend to put multiple funds in one prospectus/report. You can get these filings from SEDAR (http://www.sedar.com/homepage_en.htm); direct link to mutual funds (http://www.sedar.com/issuers/issuers_en.htm - scroll down to Investment Fund Groups (Public Companies shows up first).

2. We use Bloomberg for this type of analysis but the difficulty with Bloomberg is that you can't download the data. They will not sell the professional service (i.e. the one that allows you to download) to academic libraries. Also the historical data is limited for many time series. It is first and foremost a brokers and investors tool.

3. I think that information can be derived from the data in the Fundata Canada Inc mutual funds database.
http://www.fundata.com

Tuesday, August 1, 2006

Participation and Activity Limitation Survey Interview Manual and Training Guide

Question

A researcher here needs additional documentation for the PALS survey. Specifically, he found reference in the existing documentation to a PALS 2001 training guide and an interviewer manual. Would it be possible to obtain these two additional pieces of documentation under DLI?

Answer

The files are now available at the following locations:

WEB: http://www.statcan.ca/english/Dli/Data/Ftp/pals/pals2001.htm
FTP: /ftp/dli/pals/2001/doc

Updated Products - CTS / SPED 1996

Canadian Travel Survey

New additions of data, documentation and SPSS files!

New data for 2003 and 2004

WEB: http://www.statcan.ca/english/Dli/Data/Ftp/cts/cts2003.htm
FTP: dli/cts/2003

WEB: http://www.statcan.ca/english/Dli/Data/Ftp/cts/cts2004.htm
FTP: dli/cts/2004

Recently scanned documentation for 1990

WEB: http://www.statcan.ca/english/Dli/Data/Ftp/cts/cts1990.htm
FTP: dli/cts/1990/doc

SPSS files (1988, 1990 and ptrip for 2003 & 2004)

WEB: http://www.statcan.ca/english/Dli/Data/Ftp/cts.htm
FTP: dli/cts/

Sub-Provincial Employment Dynamics - 1996

This cd-rom product is now available via the FTP and Web sites:

Sub-provincial Employment Dynamics uses longitudinal data to produce year-to-year changes in the number of employer businesses, employment and payrolls in Canada. Changes are shown by size of business and by business life status, which includes entry, exit, growth and decline.

FTP: ftp/dli/sped
WEB: http://www.statcan.ca/english/Dli/Data/Ftp/sped.htm