Future to Discover Project (FTD)

Future to Discover Project (FTD)
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Detailed information for 2004-2005 (Cycle 2)

Status:

Inactive

Frequency:

Occasional

Record number:

5066

The overall objective of the Future to Discover Project is to try to understand whether better information about career choices and/or a promise of financial incentives can encourage students who might not normally decide to pursue post-secondary education (PSE), to complete high school and go on to PSE.

Data release - The data have not been released in tabular form by Statistics Canada. A "share file" has been forwarded to the client, as per the contract and data sharing agreement.

Description

The FTD Project has been undertaken by the Canadian Millennium Scholarship Foundation (CMSF) and the New Brunswick and Manitoba Departments of Education. The CMSF contracted the overall management of the project to the Social Research and Demonstration Corporation (SRDC). Statistics Canada's role was to conduct interviews of a sample of grade nine students and their parents plus have consent forms signed.

The purpose of this project is to try to understand whether better information about career choices and/or a promise of financial incentives can encourage students who might not normally decide to pursue post-secondary education (PSE), to complete high school and go on to PSE. In general terms, the project entails interviewing a sample of Grade nine students and their parents. After completion of the interviews and signing of consent forms, each student would be randomly assigned to one of four experimental groups. The students in each group would receive a different "treatment". Students in one group would receive a promise of financial help if they attend PSE, students in a second group would receive information during high school about career options, students in a third group would receive both the promise of financial aid and the career information while students in the fourth group received no aid and acted as the control group. The parent interview focussed on socio-demographic and economic characteristics of the student and parent and the household in which they live. For example, Gender, age, students education record, parent's level of education, labour force status, occupation, language characteristics, citizenship, ethnicity, family structure and income. The student was asked to report achievements in core subjects and overall marks, participation in extracurricular activities at school and outside school, at work and support networks; skills and self-confidence; experiences, problems and attitudes toward school; and relationships with peers. The project would recontact the students in a number of years to assess whether the rates of high-school completion and participation in PSE might be significantly higher amongst students in any of the treatment groups as compared to the control group.

Reference period: Academic year

Subjects

  • Educational attainment
  • Education finance
  • Education, training and learning

Data sources and methodology

Target population

The target population includes all Grade nine students in their respective province (New Brunswick or Manitoba), who are Canadian Citizens or landed immigrants to Canada. The survey population includes those students who were enrolled in one of the targeted schools (a school had to have at least 90 grade nine students) and had to have a parent or legal guardian available to sign a consent form.

Instrument design

The FTD involved the use of two interview instruments and two versions of a consent form. The interview instruments included a self-administered paper and pencil questionnaire (PAPI) for the student and an interviewer administered computer assisted personal interview (CAPI) for the parent. The consent forms differed on the basis of which experimental treatment group the student had a chance to be assigned to. Students within families with high incomes were not eligible to be assigned to either group which included financial assistance. The content of the parent and student questionnaires was developed through a collaborative effort on the part of SRDC and Statistics Canada and took advantage of questions from the Youth in Transition Survey (YITS - record number 4435) and Survey of Approaches to Educational Planning (SAEP - record number 4442). Questionnaire content was reviewed by questionnaire design experts within Statistics Canada's Questionnaire Design Resource Centre. The development of the CAPI application for the parent interview underwent a standard set of end-to-end testing procedures to ensure that the application was ready for use in the field. The content of the consent forms was developed by SRDC and Statistics Canada staff with consultation of the Data Access and Control Services Division of Statistics Canada.

Sampling

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

A complete sample frame of all grade nine students in their respective province (New Brunswick or Manitoba) did not exist. Sampling consisted of two phases. First phase involved selecting a sample of targeted schools, stratified by English or French. A school had to have at least 90 grade nine students to have a chance of selection. Within each sampled school, a random sample of grade nine students enrolled at the school was selected, generally between 40 and 60 students per school. Cycle 2 of the project involved interviews of some 1,500 students from 24 schools in Manitoba and 2,500 students from 30 schools in New Brunswick.

Data sources

Data collection for this reference period: 2005-04-06 to 2005-06-30

Responding to this survey is voluntary.

Data are collected directly from survey respondents.

Data were collected from the student and a parent at the time of an at-home visit by a Statistics Canada interviewer. A paper questionnaire was provided to the student who was asked to complete the questionnaire with no input from the interviewer or parent. At the same time, the interviewer would conduct a CAPI interview with the parent. At the completion of the parent interview, the application would indicate which of two versions of the consent form would be appropriate for the parent to sign. This assignment included an evaluation of the value of total income provided by the parent during the interview. The interviewer would read the consent form to the parent, ensure the parent understood the form by asking follow-up questions, and then ask the parent to sign the consent form. The interviewer would collect the student questionnaire and the consent form and place the two in an envelope to be returned to Statistics Canada. The responses to the student questionnaire were data captured. The consent form was imaged. The data from the parent interview, data from the student questionnaire and a flag to indicate the presence of a signed consent form were merged into one record for each student.

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

Error detection

Validity and consistency edits were applied to the parent CAPI interview at the time of the interview. Flow edits were applied to the data captured from the student questionnaires and adjustments, in consultation with the client, were made so that data respected the specifications of the paper questionnaire. At the request of the client, adjustments to the data captured from the student questionnaire based on consistency edits were kept to a minimum. The matching process across the three sources of information (parent questionnaire, student questionnaire and consent form) provided a means of detecting missing or incorrectly signed consent forms which required follow-up field work.

Imputation

This methodology does not apply.

Estimation

This methodology type does not apply to this statistical program.

Disclosure control

Statistics Canada is prohibited by law from releasing any data which would divulge information obtained under the Statistics Act that relates to any identifiable person, business or organization without the prior knowledge or the consent in writing of that person, business or organization. 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.

The data have not been released in tabular form by Statistics Canada. A "share file" has been forwarded to the client, as per the contract and data sharing agreement.

Revisions and seasonal adjustment

This methodology does not apply to this survey.

Documentation

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