Statistics Canada
www.statcan.gc.ca
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Choosing the dataset
Statistical investigation requires a set of suitable data. There are two categories of data: primary data and secondary data.
Primary dataSecondary data
Primary data
What are primary data?
Primary data are collected to answer specific questions. They are gathered directly from first-hand sources by means of surveys, observation or experimentation.
Students may use primary data obtained through a ready-to-use survey such as Census at School or they can create their own survey or experiment to obtain data for a specific question. For example, the question "Does the amount of time spent playing computer games affect school grades?" could lead students to design a classroom or school-wide survey on the connection between electronic gaming and study habits.
Resources for collecting primary data
The following resources available from Statistics Canada can help students collect primary data:
Students complete an online survey in class, providing anonymous information about their lives and activities. The survey's questions were developed by an interprovincial advisory group of teachers to be relevant to curricula and interesting to students. Some questions, such as languages spoken at home, fit the geography curriculum and resemble those on the national census. Other questions relate to the healthy living curriculum, such as smoking and nutrition or to social issues, such as bullying, role models and students' charities of choice.
The following table of selected class results from the Census at School survey is a good example of primary data:
Table 1 Example of Census at School class results
This guide to statistics will help students choose a specific question, plan a survey and analyse the collected data. Students will find practical advice about everything from questionnaire design and sampling methods to types of graphs and measures of central tendency. Included are exercises and answers for a vast number of statistical concepts, as well as lesson plans for teachers' use.
Household Environment Survey: School edition
Statistics Canada's Household Environment Survey measures the environmental practices and behaviours of Canadians. The school edition allows students to collect their own data using the same questionnaire. Students can compare their class results to those of the official Canadian survey.
Secondary data
What are secondary data?
Students may use data that have been gathered by someone else for another purpose but are suitable for their research needs. Such previously obtained information is called secondary data.
Secondary data may have been sorted, grouped into percentages, graphed or analysed in some way. They may be obtained from previously published materials, such as books, magazines, newspapers, government census publications and company reports and files.
Topics of interest that use secondary data
Statistics Canada provides free online access to a wide variety of Canadian secondary data. Teachers will find data tables that support research about a wide variety of topics, including some that may be of specific interest to young people. For example, the Health Indicators tables (listed below under Sources of Canadian secondary data) provide information about youth and health issues such as:
- age-specific mortality rates
- alcohol consumption
- food consumption
- physical activity
- teenage pregnancies
- tobacco use
Students have used Statistics Canada resources to create interesting projects on various topics. These include the following titles:
- Trends in Energy Consumption in Canada
- Teen Pregnancy and Abortion
- Obesity and Diabetes: A Growing Epidemic
- Teenager Driving Infractions
- Education, Salary and Career Paths
Sources of Canadian secondary data
The following resources may be used to find topics related to Canadian curricula and student interests.
For math and social sciences, use E−STAT to graph, tabulate, download, analyse and map a huge selection of data. It is Statistics Canada's most comprehensive source of data and covers the widest span of years and most detailed levels of geography. Developed specifically for schools, E−STAT contains chronological data from hundreds of social and economic surveys, as well as several hundred census variables for every province, county and municipality in Canada, right down to census tracts or neighbourhoods. Of particular interest to students are data on the health behaviour of school-age children. Free school registration is required. User name and password are required for use outside the school.
Visit your community! In Community Profiles, find selected data from the most recent census for every community in Canada on the following topics: Aboriginal peoples, education, families and households, immigration and citizenship, income and earnings, labour, language, language of work, mobility and migration, place of work, population (including age groups) and visible minorities.
Summary tables, formerly called Canadian statistics, provide continuously updated national and provincial data gathered through hundreds of surveys. These top 500 tables are sorted into 32 broad subject categories. You can search the tables by subject, province, territory or metropolitan area. The Overview section offers useful brief articles related to each subject.
Over 80 indicators measure the health of the Canadian population and the effectiveness of the health care system. Designed to provide comparable information at the health region and provincial/territorial levels, these data are produced from a wide range of the most recently available sources.
While E−STAT and Community Profiles are the primary sources of census data for students, the Census section of Statistics Canada's website provides additional resources, including information about the census, articles from the Analysis series, data tables organized by topic and geography, maps, animated presentations and reference documents.
The Daily news releases cover a wide range of topics and usually include tables and/or graphs. Use The Daily's search engine to find articles of interest and then sort using date to find the most recent ones. Articles often refer to CANSIM table numbers that allow you to further investigate the data. Find these tables free in E−STAT. Articles also link to a section called 'Definitions, data sources and methods: survey number', where you can read about sampling techniques and view the actual questionnaire.
This area provides lists of publications: electronic versions are available for free and print versions are for sale. Subject-specific data tables can be found within publications on the environment, health, education, justice and other topics.
Microdata files are a good source of large datasets suitable for manipulation using dynamic statistical software (such as Fathom). They provide a representative sample of anonymous individual survey responses. For examples, see the following microdata sources:
Sources of international secondary data
Census at School international data
In addition to providing primary data about your own class, Census at School allows students to access data collected from a number of countries, including the United Kingdom, Canada, New Zealand, Australia and South Africa. These are useful for questions comparing international conditions.
Although most of its data are Canadian, E−STAT also contains some information from other countries. Of particular interest to students are the data on the health behaviours of school-age children from different countries.
International statistical websites
Students can use these links to national statistics offices and other international statistical organizations to search trends in dozens of countries for world issues projects.
