Official Canadian Government Travel Survey

Detailed information for fourth quarter 1994

Status:

Inactive

Frequency:

Quarterly

Record number:

1803

This survey collects data on a continuous basis from visitors from countries other than the United States.

Data release - April 13, 1995

Description

This survey collects data on a continuous basis from visitors from countries other than the United States.

Subjects

  • International travel
  • Travel and tourism

Data sources and methodology

Sampling

This is a sample survey.

Data sources

Responding to this survey is voluntary.

Data are collected directly from survey respondents.

Since 1979, this questionnaire has been distributed under a stint sampling scheme at the ten major international airports (estimated sampling fraction of 12%). This system was also adopted at major land ports in 1982 (estimated sampling fraction of 15%). Smaller ports distribute the questionnaire on a continuous basis to 100% of the traffic. A stint consists of a selected period of several days during which each port involved has a specific quantity of numbered questionnaires to distribute to eligible travellers. On the start date, the officers hand out the questionnaire on a continuous basis until they have all been distributed. A phone call is made to the Liaison Staff the day before and ten days after the start of the stint. In this way, the response rate of each stint, the coverage rate of the traffic and the length of the stint can all be used as a measure of performance for each stint.

Estimation

In order to reduce the effect of sampling variability and biases in the survey, the response is disaggregated by known population characteristics into homogeneous sets or factor groups. In the case of visitors from countries other than the United States, the weighting is made by country of residence for each of the four types of traffic (direct, via land; same-day, via land; one or more nights stays; and via U.S., other) and is also based on persons.

Quality evaluation

The reliability of the estimates obtained from the present system is estimated by means of a variance calculation program which forms part of the regular processing of the survey data. This program provides estimates of the sampling variance and the coefficient of variation (CV) of each weighted estimate produced by the system. For 1981, the range of percentage coefficient of variation for the spending by residents from these countries was calculated at 0.6% to 1%; for each person-night it was 1.1% to 2.5%.

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.

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