Social Identity relationship with the Ethnic Diversity Survey 2002

Question

Are the General Social Survey (GSS) 27 and the Ethnic Diversity Survey related?

I checked the Users’ guide for GSS 27, and did not find an instances of “Ethnic diversity”. However, I just checked the Questionnaire http://www62.statcan.ca/dli-idd/metadata/gss-esg/gss-2013-c27/GSS27SI_questionnaire.pdf.

On page 132 / 352, the second last line indicates “Similar question was asked Ethnic Diversity Survey 2002 (AT_Q030)”.

On page 134 / 352, under the first variable and values, it states “Based on Ethnic Diversity Survey 2002 Statistics Canada (AT_Q020).”

That is all that comes up for “Ethnic diversity”, but there are 28 instances of “ethnic” so there is a fair amount of content on this topic in GSS 27.

I searched the Statistics Canada website a bit to see if I could find anything else linking these two surveys, but came up empty handed. I am wondering if you can confirm that these two questions are the extent of the relationship between these two surveys, or am I missing anything else?

Answer

I confirmed with the subject matter division regarding your question. Here is the response from the survey manager.

“The 2013 General Social Survey (GSS) on Social Identity (SI) (cycle 27) did indeed borrow some content questions from the 2003 Ethnic Diversity Survey, but there is no relation between surveys. It is true that the “ethnicity” dimension is present in both surveys, but the 2013 GSS on SI has a larger scope which includes Social networks, civic participation and engagement, knowledge of Canadian history, appreciation of national symbols, shared values, confidence in institutions and trust in people. Other differences include, the instrument design, sampling, methodology and reference period.“

Ethnic Diversity Survey

Question

A faculty member here is looking at using the Ethnic Diversity Survey. We couldn’t find a “number of children ever born” variable - is there any measure of fertility other than number of children in the household (which obviously doesn’t capture children who have moved out)?

Answer

The author division of the Ethnic Diversity Survey has confirmed that this survey does not measure the number of children who live outside of the household.

Union Involvement and Ethnic Groups

Question
I have a student who wants to know the level of ethnic group involvement in unions. I did some searching, but haven't found any stats on this from Stats Canada. Does anyone have suggestions as to where we might
find this type of information or if it is even collected. Perhaps one would have to take a couple of surveys or Census pieces and match them together.

Answer
I have a couple of suggestions. The User's Guide for the Ethnic Diversity Survey refers to a derived variable called PC_JOBRE. I have cut and pasted selected information about that variable:

PC_JOBRE
Derived
Position: 365 Length: 2
Derived - Group or organization - Business or job related association
FREQ WTD
01 Yes 986 523,189
02 No 18,320 9,712,812
96 Not asked 851 547,529
97 Not applicable 21,513 12,295,094
98 Refused 11 6,481
99 Don't know 14 7,539
------------ ------------------ 41 ,695 23,092,644
Note: Derived from PC_0030 and PC_S030.

"Yes" indicates that the respondent belonged to, or was a participant in a "Business or job related association" ..."Business or job related association" includes responses indicating participation in groups or organizations such as business clubs or professional associations; unions; Chambers of Commerce; etc.

As you can see, the PC_JOBRE variable does not differentiate between union membership and membership in other types of job associations. I am fairly certain that this could be done as a custom tabulation. Please let me know if a custom tabulation would be of interest and I will confirm with the author division.

If your student is interested in older data, the following study from 1998 contains a table comparing union membership of immigrants and native-born Canadians:

http://www.statcan.ca/english/research/11F0019MIE/11F0019MIE1998114.pdf

Ethnic Diversity Survey

Question

I have a student wanting to work with the Ethnic Diversity Survey. She wants to cross-reference survey responses to where the participants lived - either the name or the size of the town. I understand that Stats Can considered and recorded this information when determining who would be asked to participate in the survey, but can my student get at that information? If so, how? W/Could she get this information at an RDC?

She is looking at the influence of the size of cultural communities on the speed of immigrants' integration into the wider society. She wants to compare immigrants/immigrant groups in smaller towns to larger urban centres.

Answer

I took a look at the PUMF's codebook for some extra help on this one.

The level of geography reported in the PUMF is CMA (Toronto, Montreal, Vancouver, Other CMA and non-CMA). Only 42,476 responded to the survey which will make it extremely difficult to find data at a low level of geography when we consider Statistics Canada's confidentiality rules.

I took at look at the RDC's collection
(http://www.statcan.ca/english/rdc/whatdata.htm)
and EDS is listed as an available dataset. Once again, the assessment of place of residence may be a touch tricky due to the small size of the sample.