Canadian Health and COVID-19 Survey (CHCS)

Detailed information for July to September 2023

The Canadian Health and COVID-19 Survey (CHCS) is a crowdsource electronic questionnaire that used an experimental non-probabilistic method to collect important information about lasting general health problems and symptoms and about the long-term impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Data release - March 15, 2024

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

Description

The Canadian Health and COVID-19 Survey (CHCS) collected information on the presence of COVID-19 among the targeted population, protection against COVID-19, health concerns, use of the health care system, and prescribed medications. The results of the data collection initiative will be used to develop programs and services to respond to needs related to the pandemic.

Reference period: Varies according to the question (e.g., March 2020 until today, in the past 12 months, etc.).

Collection period: Early July to early September 2023.

Subjects

• Diseases and health conditions
• Health
• Lifestyle and social conditions

Data sources and methodology

Target population

The Canadian Health and COVID-19 Survey (CHCS) allowed the Ontario Ministry of Health to collect information about and obtain estimates for subpopulations of particular interest (i.e., health-care workers, underserved populations).

Instrument design

The data collection initiative collected data on the presence of COVID-19 in the subpopulations of particular interest (i.e., health-care workers, underserved populations), protection against COVID-19, health concerns, use of the health care system and prescribed medications.

The questionnaire followed standard practices and wording used in a computer-assisted interviewing environment, such as the automatic control of flows that depended upon answers to earlier questions and the use of edits to check for logical inconsistencies and capture errors. The computer application for data collection was tested extensively.

Sampling

This methodology does not apply.

Data sources

Data collection for this reference period: 2023-07-04 to 2023-09-08

Participation in this data collection initiative was voluntary.

Data were collected directly from participants.

Collection method: Electronic questionnaire.
Languages offered to participants: English and French.

Data were collected directly from participants through the online crowdsourcing application.

Only with a participants' consent will Statistics Canada share data with Health Canada, the Public Health Agency of Canada, and provincial and territorial ministries of health under the data sharing agreements.

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

Error detection

Electronic files containing the daily transmissions of completed participant survey records were combined to create the "raw" data file. Before further processing, verification was performed to identify and eliminate potential duplicate records.

In addition, some out-of-scope participants were found during the data clean-up stage. All participant records that were determined to be out-of-scope were removed from the data file. This included participants with an indication that they did not belong to the targeted subpopulations of interest.

After the verification stage, editing was performed to identify errors and modify affected data at the individual variable level. The first editing step was to identify errors and determine which items from the initiative output needed to be kept or modified on the survey master file. This included removing or correcting date variables that were set into the future, as well as implausible heights and weights. Subsequent to this, reclassification of other-specify responses was completed as required.

Imputation

No imputation was performed on questions left unanswered by participants.

Estimation

Due to the non-probabilistic nature of the crowdsourcing data collection, a probability of selection is not available given the absence of a sample design and a survey weight cannot be calculated. Furthermore, no adjustment was made for non-response as the concept of a non-response rate is not applicable in the crowdsourcing context. Given the small number of participants, benchmarking factors could not be calculated to compensate for over/underrepresentation.

Results obtained from this crowdsourcing pertain only to the participants and should not be used to draw conclusions about the general population.

Quality evaluation

The data collected through the Canadian Health and COVID-19 Survey (CHCS) presents data quality concerns and the data should not be used to make inferences about the target populations. Caution must be exercised when interpreting these data because data collection was conducted on a self-selected voluntary basis and therefore subject to multiple biases. For more information about the data quality please refer to the user guide.

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.

Revisions and seasonal adjustment

This methodology does not apply.

Data accuracy

As crowdsourcing is based on a non-probability sample, measures of sampling error such as variance, coefficients of variation, margins of error, or confidence intervals should not be calculated.

Moreover, since crowdsourcing data were collected from self-selected volunteers, the data are subject to multiple biases. No benchmarking factors were calculated to reduce these biases.