Survey of Residential Facilities for Victims of Abuse (SRFVA)

Detailed information for 2022-2023 (snapshot day: April 13, 2023)

Status:

Active

Frequency:

Every 2 years

Record number:

3328

The Survey of Residential Facilities for Victims of Abuse (SRFVA) is a census of Canadian residential facilities primarily mandated to provide residential services to victims of abuse. The objective of SRFVA is to produce statistics on the services offered by these facilities during the previous 12 months, as well as to provide a one-day snapshot of the clientele being served on a specific date (mid-April of the survey year).

Data release - Scheduled for April 10, 2023

Description

The objective of the Survey of Residential Facilities for Victims of Abuse (SRFVA) is to collect data that can be used to produce statistics on facilities in Canada primarily mandated to provide residential services to victims of abuse (defined as on-going victimization). In aggregated form, the collected data provide an indication of the number and types of residential services and admissions over time, as well as the characteristics of clients being served on a specific survey reference day, or "one day snapshot". This will provide valuable information that is useful for various levels of government, sheltering and other non-profit organizations, service providers, and researchers to assist in developing research, policy and programs, as well as identifying funding needs for residential facilities for victims of abuse. This information may also be used by Statistics Canada for other statistical and research purposes.

The SRFVA is a redesign of the original Transition Home Survey (THS).

The SRFVA differs from the THS in terms of survey frame, content, collection, processing, and analysis. In particular, the scope of the SRFVA was enlarged beyond facilities serving abused women and their children. Due to these changes, data collected for the SRFVA are not comparable with historical THS data.

Statistics Canada will make information available through a data release in The Daily, as well as through additional products available to the public, including an analytical report and statistical tables.

Reference period: Fiscal year, calendar year or a 12 month period of the respondent's choosing; snapshot date (mid-April of survey year)

Collection period: April through August of the survey year

Subjects

  • Crime and justice
  • Family violence
  • Victims and victimization

Data sources and methodology

Target population

This survey is a census of Canadian residential facilities primarily mandated to serve victims of abuse. These may include short-term, long-term, and/or mixed-use facilities, transition homes, second stage housing, safe home networks, women's emergency centres, emergency shelters, Rural Family Violence Prevention Centres (Alberta only), Interim Housing (Manitoba only), Family Resource Centres, and any other residential facilities offering services to victims of abuse with or without children.

Instrument design

The Survey of Residential Facilities for Victims of Abuse questionnaire content was developed under the direction of Subject Matter and the Questionnaire Design Resource Centre (QDRC) through consultations with stakeholders. Consultations were conducted to learn more about the information needs of data users and sought feedback on the relevance of Transition Home Survey data and proposed changes to the survey scope.

Further refinements to the questionnaire and testing of the electronic questionnaire functionality were conducted through content testing. User acceptance testing was conducted to identify issues with questionnaire text and flow. End to End testing was conducted to ensure proper process flow from data entry to data extraction and processing.

Sampling

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

Data are collected for all units of the target population.

Data sources

Data collection for this reference period: 2023-04-06 to 2023-09-05

Responding to this survey is voluntary.

Data are collected directly from survey respondents.

Collection is conducted in two phases: pre-contact collection and main collection.

An initial pre-contact frame is contacted to identify in-scope units for the main collection period, as well as to acquire contact information for primary respondents, including email addresses. Pre-contact is conducted in the regional offices, using a telephone interview. Data is collected using an electronic questionnaire loaded into the Business Collection Portal (BCP).

Main collection is conducted for all in-scope units identified in the pre-contact phase. A secure access code (SAC) is emailed to the primary contact respondent for in-scope units. If there is no email address provided for the unit, then a SAC letter is mailed to the mailing address. Main collection is conducted through self-response and via interviewers in the regional offices. An electronic questionnaire rendered in the Electronic Questionnaire Generation System is available for self-response, and it is loaded into the BCP for interviewer follow-up. Follow-up includes contacting respondents for non-response cases and failed edits.

An introduction email or letter is sent to respondents two weeks before main collection to indicate that they will be asked to complete a questionnaire electronically in the coming weeks, and the types of data they should prepare to have available.

E-mail and letter reminders are sent according to a collection schedule for non-response cases.

All collection materials are provided to respondents in English and French.

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

Error detection

During data collection, within the electronic questionnaire, errors are flagged to the respondent using edit messages to identify missing, invalid or inconsistent responses. Errors identified as a higher priority are followed up with the respondent by telephone. After collection, the data is processed using the Social Survey Processing Environment, during which further edits are applied to identify missing, invalid and inconsistent data. The types of edits include additive edits, consistency edits and tolerance edits. Extreme data are identified as outliers and are manually reviewed and excluded for use in imputation.

Imputation

For non-respondents to the survey and for those respondents who do not answer some of the questions, imputation is used to complete the missing data for key questions. Imputation methods include deterministic imputation, trend-adjusted historical imputation and nearest-neighbour donor imputation (where values are taken from a similar record in terms of facility location and type). All imputed data are then validated through the Social Survey Processing Environment system for consistency.

Estimation

All units in the in-scope population are surveyed and imputation is performed for total non-respondents so there are no weights used for estimation. Estimation is done by aggregation of the values of all units in the domain of estimation.

Quality evaluation

At each stage of the survey process, results are reviewed. This includes monitoring response rates, edit failure counts and missing data counts as well as evaluating the impact of imputation. The survey results are also evaluated through comparison with results from the last cycle of the survey.

Disclosure control

Statistics Canada is prohibited by law from releasing any information it collects that could identify any person, business, or organization, unless consent has been given by the respondent or as permitted by the Statistics Act. 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.

In order to prevent any data disclosure, confidentiality analysis is done using the Statistics Canada Generalized Disclosure Control System (G-Confid). G-Confid is used for primary suppression (direct disclosure) as well as for secondary suppression (residual disclosure). Direct disclosure occurs when the value in a tabulation cell is composed of or dominated by few enterprises while residual disclosure occurs when confidential information can be derived indirectly by piecing together information from different sources or data series.

Revisions and seasonal adjustment

This methodology type does not apply to this statistical program.

Data accuracy

The response rate for the first cycle of this survey was 92%.

This survey is a census, therefore it is only subject to non-sampling errors, such as coverage, non-response and data errors.

Coverage error can result from omissions, erroneous inclusions, duplication and misclassification of units on the survey frame. To minimize coverage error, information from multiple sources is used to create the survey frame and the frame is updated on a regular basis.

Non-response error is related to respondents that refuse to answer the survey or are unable to respond to the survey. In these cases, data are imputed. Attempts are therefore made to obtain as high a response rate as possible to minimize non-response error.

Data error may be due to questionnaire design, the characteristics of a question, inability or unwillingness of the respondent to provide information for a question, misinterpretation of the questions, definitional problems or data entry mistakes. These errors are controlled through careful questionnaire design, the use of easily understood concepts, electronic questionnaire edits and data processing edits. Detection and resolution of data errors is done at every stage in the survey process.

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