Survey Series on Accessibility

Detailed information for first quarter 2024

The Survey Series on Accessibility (SSA) involves creating a panel of people who agree to complete a series of short surveys over a period of one year.

Data release - February 10, 2025 (SSA-EAE); February 24, 2025 (SSA-EAICT); May 27, 2025 (SSA-EAT)

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

Description

The Survey Series on Accessibility (SSA) is a series of social surveys beginning in 2024. This project is collected as part of the Disaggregated Data Action Plan (DDAP) with the objective of producing detailed statistical information highlighting the lived experiences of specific population groups, as well as increased analytical insights on diverse groups of people. Questionnaire content will focus on a variety of difficulties or barriers a person may experience within different areas of their daily lives. Results will support the Federal Data and Measurement Strategy for Accessibility, aiming to help identify, remove and prevent barriers to accessibility in Canada. The surveys in the series will be conducted online and through telephone interviews with respondents who volunteered to participate. The SSA is designed to produce data at the national level.

Data sources and methodology

Target population

The population covered by the SSA is the same as that of the 2022 Canadian Survey on Disability (CSD). It consists of those aged 15 years and older as of May 11, 2021 (Census Day) living in the ten provinces and three territories of Canada, who reported having a difficulty or long-term condition on the 2021 Census long-form questionnaire. Specifically excluded from the survey's coverage are:

- those living in collective dwellings, such as institutional residences and Canadian Armed Forces bases;
- residents of First Nations reserves and other Indigenous settlements.

The target population for the SSA corresponds to a subset of the covered population, namely persons who reported on the SSA that they currently have difficulties or long-term conditions.

Please click on the link below for more information on the 2022 CSD target population.

• Additional documentation

Instrument design

The content for the SSA questionnaires was drafted in collaboration with the Centre for Social Data Integration and Development (CSDID) and the Diversity and Sociocultural Statistics division (DSS) at Statistics Canada, alongside partners from Employment and Social Development Canada (ESDC). The questionnaires were developed with the aim of filling data gaps related to the experiences of individuals whose everyday activities are limited due to a long-term condition or disability and possible barriers to accessibility in employment, information and communication technology, and travel.

Statistics Canada's Questionnaire Design Resource Centre (QDRC) provided input and feedback of the survey questionnaires. Question wording adheres as closely as possible to questions established by the Harmonized Content Committee at Statistics Canada.

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

Sampling

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

The survey series sample consisted of a total of 8,090 individuals from the 2022 Canadian Survey on Disability (CSD). Respondents to the 2022 CSD were asked to participate in future Statistics Canada surveys by providing a phone number or an email address. The SSA sample consists of the CSD respondents who provided a valid phone number or valid email address.

Sampling unit
The sampling unit of this survey is a person.

Please click on the link below for more information about the 2022 CSD sampling and stratification.

• Additional documentation

Data sources

Data collection for this reference period: 2024-07-29 to 2025-02-16
(SSA-EAE collection: July 29, 2024 to August 18, 2024; SSA-EAICT collection: October 15, 2024 to November 17, 2024; SSA-EAT collection: January 13, 2025 to February 16, 2025)

Responding to this survey is voluntary.

Data are collected directly from survey respondents.

Respondents are contacted through email or telephone. Data are collected directly from survey respondents either through an electronic questionnaire (EQ) or through computer assisted telephone interviewing (CATI).

Proxy responses are not allowed.

To enhance the data from this survey and to reduce the response burden, Statistics Canada will combine the information provided by respondents with information from the 2022 Canadian Survey on Disability and the other surveys in the SSA.

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

Error detection

Electronic files containing the daily transmissions of completed respondent survey records were combined to create the "raw" survey file. Before further processing, verification was performed to identify and drop duplicate and non-response records. Records that did not meet minimum response criteria were identified and removed.

Imputation

No imputation was performed on the SSA. However, for the 2022 CSD, discrepancies, logical inconsistencies and missing information were resolved wherever possible either automatically using customized deterministic editing rules or through manual interventions.

Estimation

The estimation of population characteristics from a sample survey is based on the premise that each person in the sample represents a certain number of other persons in addition to themselves. This number is referred to as the survey weight. The weighting of the sample for the SSA has multiple stages to reflect the stages of sampling and response to obtain the final set of respondents. The steps for weighting, including non-response adjustment and calibration, are described in chapter 7 of the SSA User Guide. These steps adjust the weights so that they align with the target population, with regards to certain characteristics, such as region, age group, gender and disability severity class from the CSD. To the extent that these characteristics are correlated with the variables of interest, these adjustments can improve the accuracy of the survey estimates. Variance estimation is based on a two-phase bootstrap. Please refer to section 7.6 of the User Guide for how to use the variance multiplicative factor when calculating estimates of sampling error, such as variance, standard error or CV.

Quality evaluation

While quality assurance mechanisms are applied at all stages of the statistical process, the validation and review of data by statisticians is the final verification of quality prior to release. Validation measures that were implemented include:
a) verification of estimates through cross-tabulations
b) consultation with stakeholders internal to Statistics Canada

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.

For microdata: content is reduced and modified. For tabular data: sensitive cells correction methods such as cell collapsing and suppression are applied.

Revisions and seasonal adjustment

This methodology type does not apply to this statistical program.

Data accuracy

Survey errors come from a variety of different sources. One dimension of survey error is sampling error. Sampling error is defined as the error that arises because an estimate is based on a sample rather than the entire population. Sampling error can be expressed through a confidence interval or coefficient of variation.

Response rates
2022 CSD response rate: 61.1%
2022 CSD respondents who provided valid contact information: 25.0%

Survey Series on Accessibility - Experiences with Accessibility and Employment (SSA-EAE) response rate: 35.2%
Cumulative response rate for SSA-EAE: 5.4%

Survey Series on Accessibility - Experiences with Accessibility and Information and Communication Technology (SSA-EAICT) response rate: 33.4%
Cumulative response rate for SSA-EAICT: 5.1%

The panel participants who responded to the SSA includes individuals who reported that they do not currently have a difficulty or long-term condition that has lasted or is expected to last for six or more months (LTC_05F = 1). This was done to be consistent with the response rate calculation for the CSD.

Non-sampling error
Non-sampling errors can be defined as errors arising during most survey activities excluding sampling. They are present in both sample surveys and censuses (unlike sampling error, which is only present in sample surveys). Non-sampling errors arise primarily from the following sources: non-response, coverage, measurement, and processing.

Measurement errors (sometimes referred to as response errors) occur when the response provided differs from the real value; such errors may be attributable to the respondent, the questionnaire, the collection method or the respondent's record-keeping system. Such errors may be random or they may result in a systematic bias if they are not random.

Processing errors are the errors associated with activities conducted once survey responses have been received. They include all data handling activities after collection and prior to estimation. Like all other errors, they can be random in nature, and inflate the variance of the survey's estimates, or they can be systematic, and introduce bias. It is difficult to obtain direct measures of processing errors and their impact on data quality especially since they are mixed in with other types of errors (nonresponse, measurement and coverage).

Non-response bias
Survey weights were adjusted to minimize potential bias that could arise from survey non-response. Non-response adjustments were applied to survey weights using available auxiliary information from the CSD and the long-form Census. To mitigate potential non-response bias, the survey weights are adjusted for total non-response taking into account socio-demographic variables such as education level, age group, gender and household income, as well as province and the number and severity of disabilities at the time of the CSD. The weights are also calibrated to population totals for age, gender and region derived from the CSD.

Coverage error
Coverage errors consist of omissions, erroneous inclusions, duplications, and misclassifications of units in the survey frame. Coverage errors may cause a bias in the estimates and the effect can vary for different sub-groups of the population.

The SSA data is collected from people aged 15 years and over living in private dwellings within the 10 provinces and 3 territories. Excluded from the survey's coverage are full-time residents of institutions and certain other collectives, and residents of First Nations reserves and settlements. These groups together represent an exclusion of less than 2% of the Canadian population aged 15 and over.