Title: General social survey, cycle 19: time use, 2005. Revised. ed.

Series title: General social surveys

Principal investigator(s): Statistics Canada. General Social Surveys

Producer: Ottawa, ON: Statistics Canada. General Social Surveys (12M0019GPE)(IMDB 4503)

Date of creation: 2006-12-13

Funding agency:

Collector:

Distributor: Ottawa, Ont.: Statistics Canada. Data Liberation Initiative

Date of distribution: 2007-01-16

Access conditions/restrictions: University of Toronto faculty, students and staff, for academic research and teaching purposes only. See DLI licence.

Summary: The two primary objectives of the General Social Survey (GSS) are: to gather data on social trends in order to monitor changes in the living conditions and well being of Canadians over time; and to provide information on specific social policy issues of current or emerging interest.

For the fourth time in Canada, the GSS has collected national level time use data. Time use data were also collected as part of the GSS in Canada in 1986, 1992 and 1998 (see Table 1). In addition to the time use diary, the 2005 questionnaire covers perceptions of the time crunch, social networks, transportation, and cultural and sports activities.

Keywords: commuting to work , labour , society and community , time use

Geographic coverage:

Time period:

Periodicity:

Date(s) of collection: 2005-01-12 to 2005-12-13, collected in 11 monthly samples from January to November 2005 with data collection for the November sample extending until mid-December.

Universe: The target population is non-institutionalized persons 15 years of age or older, living in the ten provinces.

Data type: public use microdata

Sample: The samples for most GSS cycles are selected using random digit dialling methods and the interviews are conducted by telephone. Thus persons in households without telephones represent less than 2% of the target population. Interviews are not conducted by cellular telephone, so persons with only cellular telephone service are also excluded; again, this group makes up a very small proportion of the population, 5%.

The sample was evenly distributed over the 11 months to counterbalance as much as possible the seasonal variation in the information gathered. Households were selected for the survey by Random Digit Dialling. The telephone numbers in the sample were selected using the Elimination of Non-Working Banks technique. This sampling technique is a method in which an attempt is made to identify all working banks for an area (i.e., to identify all sets of 100 telephone numbers with the same first eight digits containing at least one number that belongs to a household). Thus, all telephone numbers within non working banks are eliminated from the sampling frame.

In order to carry out sampling, each of the ten provinces was divided into strata, i.e. geographic areas.

Many of the Census Metropolitan Areas (CMAs) were each considered separate strata. This was the case for St. John's, Halifax, Saint John, Montreal, Quebec City, Toronto, Ottawa, Hamilton, Winnipeg, Regina, Saskatoon, Calgary, Edmonton, Vancouver and Victoria. CMAs not on this list are located in Quebec and Ontario. Two more strata were formed by grouping the remaining CMAs in each of these two provinces. Finally, the non-CMA areas of each of the ten provinces were also grouped to form ten more strata. This resulted in 27 strata in all.

Unit of observation: individual, time use episode

Mode of data collection: Computer assisted telephone interviewing (CATI) was used to collect data for the GSS. Households were selected through Random Digit Dialling methods. When a private household was reached, interviewers enumerated all household members, collecting basic demographic information including age, sex and martial status. An algorithm was then used to randomly select one household member (age 15 and older) to participate in the survey. Respondents were interviewed in the official language of their choice. Interviews by proxy were not allowed. The overall response rate during collection for Cycle 19 was 59%.

In order to include more content in this survey while maintaining the respondent burden at its minimum, it was decided to split the sample for questions included in both Section 10 and 11 of the questionnaire. Half of the respondents were asked questions about Culture, Sports and Physical Activity Participation (Section 10A) and the remaining half were asked questions on Social Network and Trust (Section 10B) and Transportation (Section 11). The respondents were randomly assigned to one of the sub-samples. Information extracted from these two sub-samples cannot be analysed together as no respondent was asked the questions from both parts of the questionnaire.

Citation: Statistics Canada. General Social Surveys General social survey, cycle 19: time use, 2005 [computer file]. Revised ed. Ottawa, Ont.: Statistics Canada [producer]; Statistics Canada. Data Liberation Initiative [distributor], Dec. 2006

Extent of file: 2 data files (19,597 and 333,654 logical records) & accompanying documentation

Notes: Until 1998, the target sample size was approximately 10,000 persons. This was increased in 1999 to 25,000. With a sample of 25,000, results are available at both the national and provincial levels and possibly for some special population groups such as disabled persons, visible minorities and seniors.

Related data: Other General social surveys

Status: