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This file provides housing information - type of structure, number of rooms, shelter costs - along with details of household composition and socio-economic information pertaining to the household maintainers and their families. It contains 137 variables.

The Microdata Files contain samples of anonymous responses to the 1996 Census questionnaire. The files have been carefully scrutinized to ensure the complete confidentiality of the individual responses. PUMFs enable the development of statistical information about Canadians, the families and households to which they belong, and the dwellings in which they live.

Microdata files are unique among census products in that they give users access to non-aggregated data. This makes PUMFs a powerful research tools. The user can group and manipulate these variables to suit his/her own data and research requirements. These provide quick access to a comprehensive social and economic database about Canada and its people.

All subject matter covered by the census is included in these files.

The 1996 PUMFs will only be released on CD-ROM using microcomputer applications.

Information by format

([B] = Bilingual; see "Bilingual products" below )

Microdata specifications

The 1996 Census Public Use Microdata Files (PUMFs) contain data based on a 2.8% sample of the population enumerated in the census. In order to protect the confidentiality of the information provided by individual respondents, special measures were taken.

Reduced level of detail: Data for small geographic areas are not available in this product. The user will find information for only the provinces, the territories, selected census metropolitan areas and selected census subdivisions. Further, the data have been aggregated in such a way as to preserve confidentiality while at the same time, providing as much detail as possible in order to maintain the analytical value of the file. For example, the data on occupations do not indicate "Physician", but rather the more general category "Occupations in Medicine and Health". This category also includes other medical occupations, such as "Nurse". For some variables, such as ethnic origin, less detailed information is available in some geographical areas than in other areas.

Suppression of data: For selected variables, data were suppressed from some records. The code "Not available" was assigned to those records.

Rounding: Income data were rounded so as not to exceed pre-set upper and lower income limits.

Weighting: The microdata files contain a record for each selected unit in the sample. Each record contains a certain number of characteristics or variables. Thus, each of these units represents, on average, many other units that are not part of the sample. To represent all of these other units in the estimation process, a variable called "WEIGHT" (weighting factor) has been added to the files; it corresponds to the number of units (including the unit selected) represented by each record from the files. The sample selection method is carried out in such a way that this variable would be constant for all the records. The sample is referred to as a "self-weighting" sample. The WEIGHT variable is equal to 36 in the files. The weighting factor therefore indicates the number of times a record must be repeated to obtain population estimates.

Subjects

Keywords

demographic characteristics, demographic statistics.

Free access

These data are available at no additional charge to Canadian educational institutions participating in the Data Liberation Initiative.

Bilingual products

Some bilingual products have changed to separate English and French products. In these cases, back issues are bilingual and the more recent issues are unilingual.

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