Adult Education Survey (AES)

Detailed information for 1983

The purposes of the survey were: 1. to estimate the number of people being served by adult education; 2. to determine the level of participation in adult education by region and by socioeconomic characteristics; 3. to estimate the number of people taking second language training through adult education.

Data release - 1985

• Description
• Data sources and methodology
• Data accuracy

Description

The Adult Education Survey was a supplement to the January 1984 Labour Force Survey (LFS) of Statistics Canada and was sponsored by the Education Support Branch of the Secretary of State. The purposes of the survey were: 1. to estimate the number of people being served by adult education; 2. to determine the level of participation in adult education by region and by socioeconomic characteristics; 3. to estimate the number of people taking second language training through adult education.

Reference period: Calendar year

Subjects

• Adult education and training
• Education, training and learning

Data sources and methodology

Target population

Civilian non-institutionalized population 17 years of age and over, excluding residents of the Yukon, Northwest Territories and Indian Reserves.

Sampling

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

The sample used in the monthly LFS is chosen to represent all people 15 and over who reside in Canada, with the exception of residents of the Yukon and the Northwest Territories, people living on Indian reserves, inmates of institutions, and full-time members of the armed forces. The Adult Education Survey was based on five-sixths of the LFS sample and included all people 17 and over. In addition to the standard LFS questions, respondents were asked about their participation in adult education during 1983. The survey used regular LFS interviewing procedures with one household member reporting for all eligible members of the household. Approximately 46,000 households were in the survey, covering nearly 92,000 individuals.

Data sources

Data collection for this reference period: 1984-01-15 to 1984-01-21

Responding to this survey is voluntary.

Data are collected directly from survey respondents.

The survey is a Labour Force Survey (record number 3701) supplement, using 5 rotation groups. Contact is made by telephone and the questions are asked after the Labour Force Survey is completed when the selected respondent is available. When the respondent is not available, then a suitable time is arranged to call back. There will be three call backs.

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.

Data accuracy

Because the estimates derived from this survey are based on a sample of households, somewhat different results would have been obtained if a complete census had been taken using the same questionnaires, interviewers, supervisors, processing methods, etc. The difference between the estimates derived from the sample and those from a census taken under similar conditions is called the sampling error. In general, the value of the sampling error is unknown, but it is possible to estimate its probable size using the sample data. The sampling variance is an estimate of the size of the error, and is often reported as its square root, the standard deviation, or as the ratio of the standard deviation to the estimate, the coefficient of variation (CV). Derivation of standard deviations for each of the estimates which could be generated from many surveys would be a costly procedure. Consequently, crude measures of sampling variability have been developed. These measures are produced by applying an estimated design effect to the variance estimate calculated with the assumption of simple random sampling. Data with CVs greater than 25% should not be reported in tables and charts. Those with CVs between 16% and 25% can be reported, but should be identified. It should be noted that the supplementary questionnaire concerned respondents' adult education activity during the whole of 1983. However, the standard LFS questionnaire, from which the bulk of demographic and socioeconomic data were derived, pertained only to the week ending January 14, 1984. Thus, some of the characteristics (e.g. place of residence, marital status) respondents reported in the reference week may have been different during 1983. The difference in reference points is particularly important with regard to labour force activity, which is subject to more change than most other variables. For example, people who were in the labour force during the reference week may not have been labour force members in 1983 when they enrolled in an adult education course. The same qualification applies to the related variables, industry and occupation, which were tabulated only for persons employed at the time of the survey. As a result, cross-tabulations of adult education participants by labour force characteristics must be interpreted tentatively.