Ontario Immigrant Literacy Survey

Question

According to the publication Literacy Profile of Ontario's Immigrants (http://www.edu.gov.on.ca/eng/training/literacy/immigrant/immige.pdf), the Ontario Immigrant Literacy Survey “was commissioned by the province of Ontario and carried out by Statistics Canada”. Is a microdata file available for the product, or is it available through the RDC program, or are summary data available?

It would seem that there was a pumf made of this data set! W Scott Murray of Special Surveys, is acknowledged as having provided these data toFerrar, Green and Riddle for their 2004/05 paper:
http://www.econ.ubc.ca/ine/papers/wp011.pdf

So, of course we want the pumf.......... 8-)

Answer

I consulted our Special Surveys Division and we think that the authors of the publication are referring to the Ontario Adult Literacy Survey (OALS).

A detailed description of OALS is available in the Definitions, data sources and methods section of the StatCan website (http://www.statcan.gc.ca/cgi-bin/imdb/p2SV.pl?Function=getSurvey&SDDS=4433&lang=en&db=imdb&adm=8&dis=2) and in the OALS Survey Guide (http://www.statcan.gc.ca/cgi-bin/imdb/p2SV.pl?Function=getSurvey&SDDS=4433&lang=en&db=imdb&adm=8&dis=2). The timing, objectives and target population of OALS seem to match those of the Ontario Immigrant Literacy Survey (OILS) described in the Literacy Profile of Ontario's Immigrants publication.

We have the OALS PUMF in the DLI collection: http://www.statcan.gc.ca/dli-ild/data-donnees/ftp/oals-eaao-eng.htm

Response

Wonderful! Same 'book', two different titles 8-) Of course, you are right. Just another example of when citations standards would have
been useful! The lack of a title page on the pdf version of the user guide
means anyone can make up their own title for it, I suppose.