Religion Data

Question:

Hello,

I’m working with a researcher who’s looking for data on gender, employment, and religion, to explore the relationship between Muslim religious identity and employment among women (at the national level). After looking around a bit it seems to me that accessing the GSS (work & home) via the RDC might be the only way to get down to the level of specific religious affiliation, but I thought I would check in here first. Would there be an option for a custom tab that would include these variables? Am I missing another source that might work for her?

Answer:

You have the National Household Survey that has religious affiliation data.
Religion (19), Age Groups (10), Sex (3), Selected Demographic, Cultural, Labour Force and Educational Characteristics (268) for the Population in Private Households of Canada, Provinces, Territories, Census Metropolitan Areas and Census Agglomerations, 2011 National Household Survey

There’s the 2001 census as well that has variable on religion, gender and employment.  Interestingly enough, the question on religion was not included in the 2016 Census since it is only asked every 10 years. The question will be considered for inclusion in the 2021 Census (source – Census Dictionary).

CTs for NHS

Question:
Does anyone know where I might hunt down the NHS for Ontario that has all variables at the CT level? I found the Provincial/CD/CSD/DA file, but that’s it.


Any guidance? My researcher wants CT!

Answer:
The complete NHS Profile at CT level is available from Stat Can Census Program website at https://www12.statcan.gc.ca/nhs-enm/2011/dp-pd/prof/details/download-telecharger/comprehensive/comp-csv-tab-nhs-enm.cfm?Lang=E. You’ll find the Ontario data file when you unzip the downloaded CSV or TAB file. The IVT (Beyond 20/20) files are available at https://www12.statcan.gc.ca/nhs-enm/2011/dp-pd/prof/details/download-telecharger/comprehensive/comp-ivt-xml-nhs-enm.cfm?Lang=E.

Recoding occupations into social classes

Question
Basic sociology question. I have a student asking me how to recode professions (NOC-S) into "social classes" (upper, middle, working class). He wanted to do it with those 10 categories. I told him there is no way you can do that with such broad domains of activity since the lawyer is in the same category as the legal assistant and an administrator is in the same group as the secretary. So he asked me what about those 30 categories. It still looks problematic to me. You have more distinctions between professional and technical occupations but how do you define what fits into "middle class"? So to anyone who is familiar with this, my question is are there "official norms" to divide the National Occupational Classification into "social classes" and what level of detail is necessary to do so? I found this article of Boyd in the Canadian Review of Sociology (appendix B) that defines the Boyd-NP scores for the 2001 census. Are those « officially » recognized and can they be adapted to the 2011 NHS?

A Socioeconomic Scale for Canada: Measuring Occupational Status from the Census 

Monica Boyd, University of Toronto

Canadian Review of Sociology

https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1755-618X.2008.00003.x

Answer 1:
There used to be two scales - Pineo-Porter classifications, and the Blishen scale – each SOC code was assigned a value which mapped to “class”. If there is a crosswalk between NOC and SOC, it might be able to update Pineo-Porter classifications or the Blishen codes to the NOC … or someone might even have already done so!

Take a look at https://www.jstor.org/stable/20460616?seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents –

A Scale of Occupational Prestige in Canada, Based on NOC Major Groups
John Goyder and Kristyn Frank
The Canadian Journal of Sociology / Cahiers canadiens de sociologie
Vol. 32, No. 1 (Winter, 2007), pp. 63-83
Published by: Canadian Journal of Sociology
DOI: 10.2307/20460616
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/20460616
Page Count: 21

Answer 2:
Subject Matter does not use the term ‘social classes’ when classifying occupations so there is no ‘official norm’ at Statistics Canada.

For the ‘Canadian Review of Sociology’ article we couldn’t open the full article and not sure what is mentioned in appendix B.

But from the text in the ‘Abstract’ it looks like the article mentioned ‘Nam-powers-Boyd’ method was used for Census of Occupation and not Census of Population.”

Missing Values in NHS Individuals PUMF

Question:
For the WAGES variable in the NHS individuals PUMF, why are "not available" and "not applicable" not declared as missing values? The codebook states that:

"The value 8,888,888 stands for not available. The value 9,999,999 stands for not applicable and is applied to all persons aged less than 15 years"

Leaving those values (which constitute over 17% of the cases) subject to calculation would seem to skew the results rather significantly, would they not?


Answer:

B Estimation
Note: Users must refrain from publishing unweighted estimates and from conducting analyses based on unweighted data from the file because the unweighted results do not represent the population but
only describe the sample. They must also make sure to exclude values of study variables that are not applicable or not available from their calculations because those values might be considered as valid observed values by the statistical software when they are not. For example, values such as 9,999,999 or 8,888,888 for a numeric (or quantitative) variable would be interpreted as valid observed values but should be considered as nominal values indicating these values are not usable in estimation.

Example 4:
We want to estimate the average total income of women aged 15 years and over living in Ontario who
have an income. In the calculation of the numerator, WEIGHT is multiplied by the value of the 'total income' variable for individuals with an income (where TOTINC ^= 8,888,888, TOTINC ^= 9,999,999, TOTINC ^= 0) whose gender is female (SEX = 1) and who are aged 15 or over (AGEGRP ≥ 6, AGEGRP ^= 88) in the province of Ontario (PR = 35); the results are then totalled. To estimate the average, the numerator (or estimated total income) is divided by the sum of WEIGHT for individuals satisfying the same conditions on TOTINC, SEX, AGEGRP and PR.
The result obtained is: $179,154,359,345 / 5,072,260 = $35,320, which means the average total income of women aged 15 and over living in Ontario who have an income is around $35,320.
B.2.b.3 Estimator of a ratio
A ratio can be defined as the division of two amounts, which could be two totals or two averages

Example these counts are included
8888 Not available (unweighted) 13,676 - (Weighted) 483,013
9999 Not applicable Canadian citizens by birth and non-permanent residents (unweighted) 697,600 – (Weighted) 26,060,226

DB-level data for Halifax

Question
I have a faculty member preparing a brief for City Council regarding a proposed heritage designation for a small downtown neighbourhood in Halifax, consisting of Dissemination Blocks 12090855009, 12090854004, 12090854003 and 12090965001. He is looking for any data that may show the array of incomes within this small area, which he hypothesizes to be a very wide spread (from poor students to wealthy homeowners).

We have some data of this sort, from the NHS 2011, at the level of Dissemination Areas, but, as always, the smaller DB geography is needed if possible. I’ve also found household income ranges by postal routes, but postal route geography is also larger than the dissemination blocks that constitute this neighbourhood.

Is there any way in which income data (households or individuals, averages, medians, etc.) at the level of these DBs might be made available to a client?

Response
According to the 2016 Census Dictionary: Only population and dwelling counts are disseminated at the dissemination block level (with the dissemination area being the smallest standard geographic area for which characteristic data are disseminated). The Chief from the Tax Section of ISD confirmed that the 2 possible geographic options using tax data would be the DA or postal code.

Furthermore, the Data Quality and Confidentiality Standard and Guidelines for the 2011 NHS states that income data is suppressed when an area has a population less than 250 or the number of private households is less than 40.

I’m currently checking with the regional office to confirm that by combining DB’s together both the population and household requirements are met so they should be able to get the information that you’re looking for.

PCCF/PCCF+ Usability Question

Question
We have a researcher that has collected her own data where each entry has either a Postal Code or Full Address. This collected data spans from 2006 to 2013. They would like to use the NHS 2011, to get demographic information on a CSD level for this data. We know we need to use a PCCF file but, are unsure which one release to use due to the time span of the data (2006 to 2011).

Answer

Have you considered using the PCCF+ file?

I consulted a presentation, available on our Training Repository here, delivered by Health Analysis Division in 2015 regarding the differences of PCCF and PCCF+, and the presentation highlighted that:

“Consider using PCCF+ rather than PCCF-SLI if any of the following apply
…
4. The “vintage” of the postal codes on your file spans more than one census”
4: “Vintage” of postal codes

• Postal codes on your file spans more than one census
• PCCF+ assigns DA or EA from each census from 1981 through 2011
• Useful for time-varying variables

The presentation also presents several case scenarios and which product to use – example of one of the case scenarios presented

Potential case strategies
Several geocoding scenarios are possible
1.Only postal codes available

• Use PCCF-SLI or PCCF+ to assign geographic codes, etc…

2.Full street address available

• Use address geocoding software (GIS)
• Use PCCF-SLI or PCCF+ on postal code portion of address

3.Telephone numbers available

• Reverse lookup to get postal code or address
• Use 911 system maps to get location from address

The most recent PCCF+ is found on the EFT here
/MAD_PCCF_FCCP_DAM/Root/2011/pccf-fccp-plus/pccf6c-fccp6c

There is a read me file at the root of the safe that indicates the release date of the versions. Version 6C is the most recent.

Ethnicity Question

Question

I am looking for the population of black Africans in Canada (either born here or who have come as immigrants). The researcher is particularly interested in knowing how many of these people work in the health care field.

This is the best info I could find so far: http://www.oacas.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/09/Fact-Sheet-Africian-Canadians-August-20151.pdf

Answer

I have been searching statcan resources for visible minority, ethnic diversity, and immigration and can think of the NHS, although that may be a little dated.

All references that I have come across are derived from the Census program. I will keep searching and let you know if I come across anything more relevant.

National Household Survey: Immigration and Ethnocultural Diversity (99-010-X)
http://www5.statcan.gc.ca/olc-cel/olc.action?ObjId=99-010-X&ObjType=2&lang=en&Limit=0

Income by household size by FSA for either 2006 Census or 2011 NHS

Question

Were there any products that provide income by household size by forward sortation area from either the 2006 Census or the 2011 National Household Survey? I haven't been able to find one, and wonder if it would be a special tabulation request.

Alternately, does the RDC Master File from either 2006 or 2011 include forward sortation area as a variable? If it did, the information could be derived.

Answer

Unfortunately, the data you are looking for is not available in our standard product line at the FSA geographic level. This data is available as a custom data tabulation from the nearest regional office.

To answer your second question - The Masterfile for the 2011 NHS and 2006 Census both include the variable FSANAME - Forward Sortation Areas © Code.

Some Statcan Resources

Question

I'm working with Census data from 1986-2006, and with the NHS 2011. I am trying to calculate mortality rates using the death counts by CSD in the Vital Statistics, and with the population counts by CSD in the short form 100% population census. In order to compute these rates, I need to match the CSDs that appear in the Vital Stats and in the Censuses, and I've been having a lot of trouble with this, as it appears there are more CSDs in the Vital Stats than in the Census. The only reasons I can think of as to why this might be occurring are: 1. that the codes have changed over the years, and 2. that some CSDs have been suppressed in the Census (whether they were incompletely enumerated reserves, or of poor data quality). I am using the concordance tables on Stat Can's website to track the changes in codes over the years, but this only accounts for a few hundred of the few thousand unmatched CSDs over the period of time I'm interested in. From this I have two questions:

What I really need for each census year (for short form & long form questions) is a list of the suppressed CSDs, showing the reason for the suppression, similar to what is available for 2011 NHS (https://www12.statcan.gc.ca/nhs-enm/2011/ref/sup_CSD-SDR-eng.cfm).


Answer

Unfortunately, we did not publish online any suppression lists prior to 2006. For 2006, we only published the names (no reasons for the suppression). In 2011, for both the Census and the NHS both the names and the reasons were published. Here are the links to these lists.

NHS Census subdivisions (CSD) not released

2011 Census subdivision (CSD) suppression list

2006 Census subdivision suppression list with names - 100% data

2006 Census subdivision suppression list with names - 20% sample data

Aboriginal labour force stats 1996

Question

I am looking for labour force statistics ie. unemployment rate, participation rate, & employment rate for Canada's Aboriginal Identified population for 1996. I would like these 3 statistics for the following groups:

Total Aboriginal identified populationFirst Nation/Status IndianMetisInuitNon-Aboriginal population

I have found these statistics for 2001 & 2006 in the Census Data & for 2011 in the 2011NHS, but am not able to find comparable data for the 1996 Census year.

Answer

I don’t a see anything available specifically in our standard products but it is something that could be done via a custom request.

That being said, searching online, I did find a publication that may be useful to them.

Produced by INAC using 1996 Census data.

http://publications.gc.ca/collections/Collection/R2-115-2000E.pdf

Microdata on Income and Educational Attainment

Question

Is it possible to obtain microdata on Income and Educational Attainment at a more granular level than CMAs, without going via the RDCs? I realize that Income is a really sensitive variable in geographic terms, and I’ve looked at the NHS files in Nesstar and some other CANSIM tables, but haven’t found anything below CMAs in either place.

Would the NHS pumf (or a different survey file) enable drilling down to smaller geographic units for either of these variables?

Also, can you confirm whether this *would* be possible via the RDC, for either variable?

Answer

If the client would only like Income data then CT level data would be available for download through the 2011 NHS Profile in either CSV or IVT format. If, however, the client would like both Income and Education data crossed together then this data would only be available on a custom data basis through the nearest regional office.

The RDC does have data available down to the CT and CSD geographic level. There is also DA level data available but in order to disseminate this data you would need to aggregate the DAs to a 5,000 plus population area.

Postal Codes and income

Question

I have been asked for help in finding most recent income levels and related postal codes. Also, separately, can I look up education levels and postal codes in same city?

Answer

They can find Income and Education data in the 2011 NHS profile here (they just need to type in the search):

http://www12.statcan.gc.ca/nhs-enm/2011/dp-pd/prof/index.cfm?Lang=E

For postal codes, they would need to contact the closes regional office for custom data request.

As well, the following may be of use/interest:

We have the census profile at the postal code level. The profile includes characteristics such as population, age, sex, dwellings, families, marital status and language.

Home
Census Program
Data products
Census Profile

We also have NHS Profile.
Home
Census Program
Data products, 2011
NHS Profile

NHS and 2011 census -- common questions

Question

I was asked a question about the differences between the 2011 census and previous censuses with respect to questions on language. The major difference between the 2011 and 2006 census on language was that the language of work question was relegated to the NHS.

1. How were the responses to questions that appeared in both the 2011 and the NHS handled?

a) Were the NHS responses ignored for common variables?b) Why were they asked twice in any case, since the census was still compulsory?c) If they were asked twice, what happened if the responses were different between the two surveys?d) For NHS datasets that include variables that appeared in both surveys (e.g., age groups), were the NHS responses used, or the census responses?

2. Are NHS response rates for individual questions available, as opposed to the global response rates for particular geographies?

Answer

1. How were the responses to questions that appeared in both the 2011 Census and the NHS handled?

(a) Were the NHS responses ignored for common variables?

When responses for both questionnaires were processed, there was a harmonization procedure applied.

When the household was the same for both the Census and NHS, some rules were put in place to compare the number of fields responded for the common variables (i.e. demography and languages).

- First step: demography variables were compared. If the number of fields responded on the Census was better than the NHS, the Census responses were kept for both the Census and NHS (i.e. Census demography responses were copied to NHS, so the original NHS responses were not retained). Otherwise, original responses were kept for both questionnaires.

- Second step: if responses to demography variables were copied to NHS then the number of fields responded for language variables on the Census and NHS were compared. If the number of fields responded was higher on the Census than the NHS, the Census language responses were kept for both the Census and NHS (i.e. Census language responses were copied to NHS, so the original NHS responses were not retained). Otherwise, original responses for languages were kept for both questionnaires. If original demography responses were kept on both questionnaires, then original language responses were also kept.

The copy of responses from Census to NHS occurred for very few questionnaires. About 5.9% of persons on the NHS database had their demography responses modified and 1.2% had their language responses modified.

When the households were not the same for both the Census and NHS, the original responses were kept for both questionnaires.


(b) Why were they asked twice in any case, since the census was still compulsory?

The decision was made to conduct the voluntary NHS during the same period as the census in order to take advantage of census resources and infrastructure such as collection management systems and employees. Questions planned for the long-form remained unchanged, including the language questions, for logistical and methodological reasons given the late decisions to change the 2011 program. Persons selected for the NHS and who responded to the census on the Internet were given the opportunity to complete the NHS online immediately after finishing the census questionnaire. When they did follow-on with the NHS, responses to common variables were automatically copied over and were then the same for both surveys. When they did not follow-on with the NHS right away, they were again offered to respond at a later time and if they did accept to respond to the NHS, a second set of responses was then obtained for the common variables. Other persons selected in the NHS sample chose to respond to the Census on paper. They were later contacted again and offered to complete the NHS and if they did accept to respond to the NHS, a second set of responses was then obtained for the common variables.


(c) If they were asked twice, what happened if the responses were
different between the two surveys?

Please see answer to question (a).


(d) For NHS datasets that include variables that appeared in both
surveys (e.g., age groups), were the NHS responses used, or the
census responses?

Please see answer to question (a).

Regarding response rates:

Response rates for individual questions are NOT available.
Imputation rates for individual questions are available in the different Census / NHS references guides at the national, provincial and territorial levels. They are not available for lower levels of geography.
The imputation rate is the proportion of respondents who did not answer a given question or whose response is deemed invalid and for which a value was imputed. Imputation improves data quality by reducing the gaps caused by non-response.

2011 NHS Reference guide for Language questions
http://www12.statcan.gc.ca/nhs-enm/2011/ref/guides/99-010-x/99-010-x2011007-eng.cfm#a5

NHS data on age group X highest certificate at Census Tract level?

Question

I’m looking for data from the 2011 National Household Survey which cross-tabulates age with education level at the Census Tract level.

I found the following data table (99-012-X2011055) on the Statistics Canada website which provides the data at the subdivision level, but not CT. The same table was on the DLI’s EFT site.

Highest Certificate, Diploma or Degree (7), Age Groups (8B), Major Field of Study - Classification of Instructional Programs (CIP) 2011 (14), Labour Force Status (8), Attendance at School (3) and Sex (3) for the Population Aged 15 Years and Over, in Private Households of Canada, Provinces, Territories, Census Divisions and Census Subdivisions, 2011 National Household Survey

Have I overlooked something, or is the data not available publicly or through the DLI?

Answer

There is the following table at the CT level for Highest Certificate, Diploma or Degree but it does not cross-tabulate with age.

Profile - Immigration and Ethnocultural Diversity, Aboriginal Peoples, Labour and Education, and Mobility and Migration for Census Metropolitan Areas, Tracted Census Agglomerations and Census Tracts, National Household Survey, 2011

There is also the NHS profile, but again, it only has an age breakdown of the highest certificate, diploma or degree by population 15+ and Total population aged 25 to 64 years by highest certificate, diploma or degree.

Downloadable at the CT level:

http://www12.statcan.gc.ca/nhs-enm/2011/dp-pd/prof/details/download-telecharger/comprehensive/comp-ivt-xml-nhs-enm.cfm?Lang=E

This would need to be done via a custom tabulation through the closest regional office.

2011 National Household Survey Income

Question

A researcher is looking for the income for 2011 for the City of Waterloo, individuals 65 and over.

All I’m finding in NHS is the Kitchener-Waterloo-Cambridge CMA data.

Is the data at the CSD level available or do we need to go through the custom tab?

Answer

Please find the link below:

Selected Demographic, Cultural, Educational, Labour Force and Income Characteristics (730), First Official Language Spoken (4), Age Groups (8D) and Sex (3) for the Population of Canada, Provinces, Territories, Census Divisions and Census Subdivisions, 2011 National Household Survey

You can select the age group 65 years and over and scroll down for the Income variables. Then click on the geographic index to view other CSDs.