Language of Work Survey

Detailed information for 2008

The survey is sponsored by the Office of the Official Language Commissioner (OCOL). As part of its mandate, the OCOL reviews the use of both official languages in federal institutions. The evaluation is done for employees in a minority situation (i.e., English in Quebec and French in New Brunswick and in bilingual areas of Ontario).

Data release - May 7, 2009 (No public use microdata file will be produced by Statistics Canada and data will not be made available through the Data Liberation Initiative (DLI).)

• Questionnaire(s) and reporting guide(s)
• Description
• Data sources and methodology
• Data accuracy

Description

The Office of the Official Language Commissioner (OCOL) reviews the use of both official languages in federal institutions. The information is usually obtained from the Public Service Employee Survey (PSES, see record number 4438). However, there are federal organizations that are under the mandate of the OCOL which did not participate in the PSES. As well, the PSES is not conducted every year. Therefore; it is necessary to obtain the information through the Language of Work Survey.

Subjects

• Government
• Labour
• Languages

Data sources and methodology

Target population

All employees of the federal departments and organizations that are under the mandate of the Office of the Official Language Commissioner who are in a minority situation (i.e., English in Quebec and French in New Brunswick and in bilingual areas of Ontario), for whom data could not be obtained from the Public Service Employee Survey.

Instrument design

The questions will be the same questions relating to language of work that were used in the 2005 PSES. The questionnaire will therefore have seven questions, i.e., five questions relating to language and two for area of work and first official language.

Sampling

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

In 2008, 11 federal organizations were evaluated for the OCOL. This is a census of all employees of those organizations in the areas selected and whose first official language is not the language of the majority. No sampling is done.

Data sources

Data collection for this reference period: 2008-09-15 to 2008-12-15

Responding to this survey is voluntary.

Data are collected directly from survey respondents.

A paper questionnaire was mailed to all employees based on a list provided by each organization.

View the Questionnaire(s) and reporting guide(s) .

Error detection

Because the survey was only seven questions and very simple, no complex editing was done.

Imputation

The only edit performed was to impute the value for the first official language of the respondent. For a few cases, the respondent did not answer the question on their first official language. Since the list of respondents provided by each department was divided by first official language, that information was used to impute the data. No other edits were necessary.

Estimation

This methodology type does not apply to this statistical program.

Quality evaluation

This survey is a census and therefore, there is no error due to sampling. However, the survey is subject to non-sampling errors such as non-response or other non-sampling errors that may occur at almost every phase of a survey operation. Respondents may make errors in answering questions, the answers may be incorrectly captured and errors may be introduced in the processing and tabulation of the data.

Quality assurance and control methods were implemented according to Statistics Canada's standard practices at each step of the data collection and processing cycle to monitor the quality of the data.

Disclosure control

Statistics Canada is prohibited by law from releasing any information it collects which 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.

No public use microdata file will be produced by Statistics Canada and data will not be made available through the Data Liberation Initiative (DLI).

Revisions and seasonal adjustment

This methodology does not apply to this survey.

Data accuracy

Since this was a census, no coefficient of variation calculation on the estimate is possible. The response rate for the survey was 60% as compared with 56.6% obtained last year for the 37 organizations in the survey.