General Social Survey - Victimization (GSS)

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.

This survey collects information on the nature and extent of criminal victimization in Canada.

Detailed information for 2009 (Cycle 23)

Data release – Data will be available in July 2010.

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• Questionnaire(s) and reporting guide(s)
• Description
• Data sources and methodology

Description

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 purpose of this survey is to better understand how Canadians perceive crime and the justice system and their experiences of victimization.

This survey is the only national survey of self-reported victimization which provides data on criminal victimization for the provinces and territories. As not all crimes are reported to the police for a variety of reasons, the survey provides an important complement to officially recorded crime rates. It measures both crime incidents that come to the attention of the police and those that are unreported. It also helps to understand why some people choose whether or not to report a crime to the police.

Results from this survey will be used by police departments, all levels of government, victim and social service agencies, community groups and researchers in universities to study Canadians' perceptions of the level of crime around them and their attitudes toward the criminal justice system; to profile victims of crimes; and to study characteristics of criminal incidents.

Statistical activity

This record is part of the General Social Survey (GSS) program. The GSS, originating in 1985, conducts telephone surveys. Each survey contains a core topic, focus or exploratory questions and a standard set of socio-demographic questions used for classification. More recent cycles have also included some qualitative questions, which explore opinions and perceptions.

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.

Additional documentation

Subjects

• Crime and justice
• Society and community
• Victims and victimization

Data sources and methodology

• Target population
• Instrument design
• Sampling
• Data sources
• Error detection
• Imputation
• Disclosure control

Target population

Canadian population aged 15 and over and not residing in institutions.

Instrument design

The questionnaire was designed based on qualitative testing (focus groups), a pilot test and interviewer debriefing.

Sampling

This is a sample survey with a cross-sectional design.

In the ten provinces, households will be selected for the survey by Random Digit Dialing. The telephone numbers in the sample are 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.

Each of the ten provinces is divided into strata, i.e. geographic areas. Many of the Census Metropolitan Areas (CMAs) are each considered separate strata: 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, and two more strata are formed by grouping the remaining CMAs in each of these two provinces. Finally, the non-CMA areas of each of the ten provinces are also grouped to form ten more strata. This gives a total of 27 strata for the provinces.

In the three territories, a portion of the households will be selected by Random Digit Dialing and the remainder will be selected from households which have completed an earlier Statistics Canada survey (the Canadian Community Health Survey or the Labour Force Survey).

Data sources

Data collection for this reference period: 2009-02-02 – 2009-11-30

Responding to this survey is voluntary. Data are collected directly from survey respondents.

Data collection will be conducted by Computer Assisted Telephone Interviewing (CATI) methods in the 10 provinces and by a combination of CATI and Computer Assisted Person Interviewing (CAPI) methods in the territories.

View the Questionnaire(s) and reporting guide(s)

Error detection

Error detection is done through edits programmed into the CATI/CAPI system.

The CATI/CAPI data capture program allows a valid range of codes for each question and built-in edits, and automatically follows the flow of the questionnaire.

All survey records are subjected to computer edits throughout the course of the interview. The CATI/CAPI system principally edits the flow of the questionnaire and identifies out of range values. As a result, such problems can be immediately resolved with the respondent. If the interviewer is unable to correctly resolve the detected errors, it is possible for the interviewer to bypass the edit and forward the data to head office for resolution. All interviewer comments are reviewed and taken into account in head office editing.

Head office edits perform the same checks as the CATI/CAPI system as well as more detailed edits.

Imputation

A similar approach to that followed in 2004 will be taken for 2009. The flow editing carried out by head office followed a 'top down' strategy, in that whether or not a given question was considered "on path" was based on the response codes to the previous questions. If the response codes to the previous questions indicated that the current question was "on path", the responses, if any, to the current question were retained, though "don't know" was recoded as 9 (99 or 999, etc.) and refusals were recoded as "Not Stated", i.e. 8 (98 or 998, etc.). If the response codes to the previous questions indicated that the current question was "off path" because the respondent was clearly identified as belonging to a sub-population for which the current question was inappropriate or not of interest, the current question was coded as "Not Applicable", i.e. 7 (97 or 997, etc.).

Due to the nature of the survey, imputation was not appropriate for most items so missing data were coded as 'not stated'.

However, non-response was not permitted for those items required for weighting. Values were imputed in the rare cases where either of the following was missing: sex or number of residential telephones.

Disclosure control

Statistics Canada is prohibited by law from releasing any data that would divulge information obtained under the Statistics Act that relates to any identifiable person, business or organization without the prior knowledge or the consent in writing of that person, business or organization. Various confidentiality rules are applied to all data that are released or published to prevent the publication or disclosure of any information deemed confidential. If necessary, data are suppressed to prevent direct or residual disclosure of identifiable data.