Working with community data

E-STAT allows you to prepare a detailed profile for any municipality in Canada using data from the censuses of population. You can select from the hundreds of demographic and socio-economic characteristics available from each census since 1986, then manipulate the data extracted, and display the results as tables or graphs. In this specific activity, you will retrieve the population by 5-year age groups for one selected municipality and then convert the data to percentages of the total population. Finally, you graph the results. The resulting bar graph of population age groups approximates part of a population pyramid. Bar charts are just one of the types of graphs available for displaying census data within E-STAT.

---

See How-To - User guide for the Search Census module for more help.

From the E-STAT sidebar, select Search Censuses.

How to find a Census table using Search Censuses

• Under Select a Census, choose 2006 Census.
• At the Database selection page, choose 2006 Census of Population (Provinces, Census Divisions, Municipalities).
• At the Profile selection page, choose 2006 Population by age group and sex.

How to select a geography

• Under Geography, select your Census subdivisions in your Province that you think includes your selected community. For this example, we have selected Census subdivisions in Quebec - 2006 - Outaouais (82 areas)

How to select your characteristic

• Under Characteristics, select Total population by sex and age groups - 100% data.

How to produce a map

• Click the Map icon at the bottom.

This generates a choropleth map, showing population for the selected group of municipalities.

Confirming your municipality is selected

If this map does not contain your selected community, click on the Back button on your web browser and select an appropriate grouping of census subdivisions under Geography. Test this out by clicking the Map icon at the bottom of the screen. Repeat this process until you locate the correct grouping of Census subdivisions.

To make absolutely sure your area is included, under the map, select the output format tab and click Reduce/Sort Geographic List. This will bring up a list of the geographic areas included in the current selection. Scroll the alphabetical list of areas and find your community.

If the map seems to contain your area, yet your community is not on this list, then perhaps your community is not a municipality. You can either work with one area on the list shown or click the Back button of your web browser, under Geography, select another grouping of Census Subdivisions. View a list of CMAs and CAs containing census tracts.

Help - Map Output Options

Selecting characteristics of interest

• Return to the Selection page.
• Under Characteristics, select Total population by sex and age groups - 100% data, if this is not already marked.

Also select all the characteristics listing male population by 5 – year age groups including:

• Male, 0 to 4 years,
• Male, 5 to 9 years,
• Male, 10 to 14 years,
• Male, 15 to 19 years,
• and all other characteristics up to and including Male, 85 years and over.

How to Reduce the list of geographic areas

• Click Reduce or sort geo list icon.
• Find your community, and select your community (for example, Gatineau).
• Click Table Areas as Columns icon.

How to express data as a percent

The characteristics for the population by age and sex will be expressed as a percentage of the total population as shown below.

• Select Data as % of 1^st characteristic to convert these counts to percentages.
• Click Redisplay As:

You can download this table to a file by clicking on the appropriate icon.

Graphing the data

• Under your table, click the bar chart icon to view the distribution of males for the selected community by age as a horizontal bar graph. This graph (shown below) is similar to an inverted population pyramid for the male population.
  Hint: Additional details on Horizontal bar graphs are available in Statistics: Power from data!.

Using your browser you can save this image in a variety of graphic formats for loading on your website.

Completing the population pyramid

• Repeat the same process for the female population by age. This will generate a table similar to that shown above.
• If you wish, generate a horizontal bar graph for the female population by age.
• Print or save this table of population by age and sex for your selected community. Use this to manually produce a population pyramid.

Congratulations!

You have successfully extracted and graphed data for your selected community!