Household Internet Use Survey

Detailed information for 1999

Status:

Active

Frequency:

Annual

Record number:

4432

The Household Internet Use Survey collects detailed data on the Internet activities of Canadian households.

Data release - December 4, 2000

Description

The Household Internet Use survey results are widely used by policy makers from federal and provincial to shape policies and programmes related to: the uptake and barriers to the adoption and use of the Internet and electronic commerce, the digital divide, high speed access to the Internet, international benchmarking as well as adoption rates and their effect on Government-on-line initiatives.

The file can support a wide range of research, including projects under the SSHRC Initiative for the New Economy.

Microdata is available to students and academics within universities and colleges under the Data Liberation Initiative.

The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development uses the file to compare adoption and rates for purposes of international comparability.

The file has been widely used in the private sector for calibration of similar research, as well as consultation on issues related to specific uses of the internet.

Results of the HIUS are widely used by the media.

Statistical activity

Science and technology (S&T) and the information society are changing the way we live, learn and work. The concepts are closely intertwined: science generates new understanding of the way the world works, technology applies it to develop innovative products and services and the information society is one of the results of the innovations.

People are looking to Statistics Canada to measure and explain the social and economic impacts of these changes.

The purpose of this Program is to develop useful indicators of S&T activity in Canada based on a framework that ties them together in a coherent picture.

Collection period: LFS interview week, usually the third week of month

Subjects

  • Individual and household internet use
  • Information and communications technology

Data sources and methodology

Target population

All residents of Canada 15 years of age or older excluding:
Residents of the Yukon, Northwest Territories and Nunavut,
Inmates of Institutions,
Persons living on Indian Reserves,
Full time members of the Canadian Armed Forces.
Exclusions constitute 2% of the population, 15 years of age and older.

Sampling

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

Estimation

The principals behind the calculation of the Household Internet Use Survey are nearly identical to those for the Labour Force Survey. However, this survey is a household-weighted survey, not a person-weighted survey. Also further adjustments are made to the LFS weights in order to derive a final weight for the individual records on the HIUS microdata file. An adjustment is made to account for the use of a five-sixths sub-sample, instead of the full LFS sample. A second adjustment accounts for the additional non-response to the supplementary survey, i.e., non-response to the Household Internet Use Survey for individuals who did respond to the LFS for which previous month's LFS data was brought forward. A final readjustment is made to account for independent province-stratum projections, after the above adjustments are made. These province-stratum totals are simply the final weighted province-stratum totals from the LFS. Note that a stratum roughly corresponds to an EIR-ER region. The weights for each respondent were adjusted in adjustment 3 by an iterative process using a calibrated estimation procedure. This procedure ensured that estimates produced for a province-stratum group would agree with the population totals for that province-stratum group. This adjustment was made by using a two-stage iterative weighting procedure, each time using the weight obtained from the previous step. This is done until the set of estimates agreed with the LFS population totals (which were created using Census population projection).

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

Quality assurance measures were implemented at each step of the data collection and processing cycle to monitor the quality of the data.

These measures included the use of highly skilled interviewers, extensive training of interviewers with respect to the survey procedures and questionnaire, observation of interviewers to detect problems of questionnaire design or misunderstanding of instructions, procedures to ensure that data capture errors were minimized and coding and edit quality checks to verify the processing logic.

Tables for coefficient of variation (CV) of individual concepts are provided free of charge within the user guide for each HIUS microdata file. CV tables help users understand quality of individual estimates.

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