Participation and Activity Limitation Survey (PALS) Question

Question

Good afternoon everyone!

I have another PALS question. We're looking at the PUMF file for 2006 and if I select ONLY those individuals with a disability (DISAB = 1) and those individuals whose income source is social assistance (AHUI_Q32F = 1).. then look at hours worked (HOURSP) - I'm left with 2130 respondents where the hours worked is Not Applicable, age <15 yrs, institutional residents.

Does this make sense? I have a graduate student who is looking at this particular question and would like to access the Master file - but is very concerned about this result. Would it be possible to check with the Authoring division to see whether this truly is the case? Is there any way to see whether there are any individuals with HOURSP that have a disability and have social assistance? This will help us determine whether the graduate student should pursue this line of inquiry or not.

Answer

A methodologist in the author division provided the following response to your question about the PALS 2006 PUMF:

"If you are working with the disabled population (DISAB=1), then you don't want to look at the variable HOURSP on the PUMF. Instead, you want to use the equivalent variable AEDE_Q01. The reason is that HOURSP is derived from the question on hours worked that was asked on Census. The same question was asked again on PALS to those who had a limitation (variable AEDE_Q01) and who had previously said they worked (ALFS_Q01=1). Since PALS came AFTER census, it was preferable to use this variable when possible (i.e. when DISAB=1) because it is more recent. This is why we put HOURSP=NA, age<15, institution residents, for everyone with a disability (because for this population, a more up to date variable exists).

Recap: If DISAB=1 and you want to look at the hours worked, you use AEDE_Q01. If DISAB=0, then you use HOURSP."