Title: General social survey, cycle 22 - social engagement, 2008
Series title: General social surveys
Principal investigator(s): Statistics Canada. Social and Aboriginal Statistics Division
Producer: Statistics Canada. Social and Aboriginal Statistics Division (12M0021XVB)(IMDB 5024)
Date of creation: 2010-01-21
Funding agency:
Collector:
Distributor: Ottawa, Ont.: Statistics Canada. Data Liberation Initiative
Date of distribution: 2010-03-10
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.
The first GSS cycle on social engagement (2003 Cycle 17, Social Engagement) collected data on dimensions of social engagement, including social participation, civic participation, trust and reciprocity.
The purpose of Cycle 22 is to collect data on social networks, and social and civic participation. Information is also collected on major changes in respondents' lives and the resources they used and needed during these transitions.
Keywords: social networks and civic participation, society and community
Geographic coverage: Canada, provinces
Time period: 2008
Periodicity:
Date(s) of collection: 2008-02-01 to 2008-11-30
Universe: The target population is non-institutionalized persons 15 years of age or older, living in the ten provinces.
Data type:
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 0.9 % of the target population (Residential Telephone Services Survey (RTSS), December 2007). Interviews are not conducted by cellular telephone, so persons with only cellular telephone service are also excluded, this group makes up 6.4% of the population (RTSS, December 2007).
This is a sample survey with a cross-sectional design.
Data for Cycle 22 of the GSS were collected between February and November, 2008. Households were selected for the survey by Random Digit Dialing. 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 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 and Vancouver. CMAs not on this list are located in Quebec, Ontario and British Columbia. Three more strata were formed by grouping together the remaining CMAs in each of these three provinces. Finally, the non-CMA areas of each of the ten provinces formed ten more strata. This resulted in 27 strata in all.
Unit of observation: individual
Mode of data collection: computer-assisted telephone interviews (CATI)
Extent of file: [n] data files (number of logical records varies) & accompanying documentation
Status:
Bibliography