Monday, March 7, 2016

Questions Regarding the Survey of Household Spending (SHS)

Question

A student has been looking at the terminated CANSIM Table 203-0020 and looking for more recent information on the items therein. The footnotes indicate that it has been replaced by CANSIM table 203-0027 due to changes in the methodology of this survey.

Unfortunately, however, this new Table does not include all of the same items, e.g., household appliances, that the terminated one did. So, question 1 became: can we get those numbers? I went to the questionnaire to ensure that they were still asking about these appliances and came up with question 2: the questionnaire asks about purchases of these items, but the CANSIM Table indicates that it is ownership at time of interview “households having…”. I also checked the User Guide for the 2014 SHS and it also talks about expenditures. Should the CANSIM Table actually be stating “purchased” not “having”?

Answer

There was a redesign of the survey and the questionnaire changed. Question 1- no the numbers can’t be retrieved after 2009. Question 2- the terminated CANSIM table is correct about the ownership. From 2010 on, this type of ownership information was not collected- just amounts spent on purchases.