StatCan Blog, August 2014

Released: 2014-08-20

Going paperless

A growing number of Canadians are trading paper for electrons when it comes to sharing their data with Statistics Canada. The August edition of the StatCan Blog examines how technology is making the job of collecting data both easier and more efficient.

For the 2011 Census, more than half of Canadian households chose to complete e-questionnaires to submit their census information. That figure is expected to jump to almost two-thirds of households for Census 2016. It is all part of the agency's efforts to ease the collection burden on Canadians, while still providing high-quality, reliable data.

One of agency's long-term goals is to go paperless. In addition to the census, the agency is rolling out online options for key business and social surveys, including the Labour Force Survey.

The e-questionnaire is one of the newer data collection methods in Statistics Canada's toolbox. As well as the traditional paper form, there are field interviewers who conduct in-home interviews and collect the responses on a laptop. The agency also uses computer-aided telephone surveys, where an interviewer calls, poses questions and inputs responses into a computer on behalf of the respondent.

The purpose is to ease the burden on respondents and obtain the most comprehensive results possible by providing many options to complete surveys—whether a respondent is punching answers into a Smart phone or speaking face-to-face with a StatCan interviewer.

Contact information

For more information, contact us (toll-free 1-800-263-1136; 514-283-8300; infostats@statcan.gc.ca).

To enquire about the concepts, methods or data quality of this release, contact Penny Stuart (613-951-2005; penny.stuart@statcan.gc.ca), Communications Division.