Survey on Social Connections - Well-being in Canada (SSC-WC)

Detailed information for 2025

The Survey on Social Connections - Well-being in Canada (SSC-WC) is a new survey in 2025 which aims to provide a picture of the social connections and experiences of people living in Canada.

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

Description

The Survey on Social Connections - Well-being in Canada (SSC-WC) is a new survey in 2025. 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 cover a variety of social topics. The frame of the survey is constructed using the 2021 Census Edit & Imputation database combined with a sample of recent immigrants from the Longitudinal Immigration Database (IMDB) file and recent files received from Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada (IRCC). The SSC-WC was designed to provide estimates within racialized groups and immigration status categories.

Please visit the link below for more information on the IMDB.
https://www23.statcan.gc.ca/imdb/p2SV.pl?Function=getSurvey&SDDS=5057

Reference period: 2025

Collection period: April to June

Subjects

• Society and community

Data sources and methodology

Target population

The target population for the SSC-WC are those aged 15 years and older living in the ten provinces of Canada, with a focus on ensuring coverage of racialized groups and immigration status through oversampling. Specifically excluded from the survey's coverage are:

- full-time residents of institutions and certain other collectives;
- residents of First Nations reserves and settlements.

Instrument design

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.

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

Stratification method:
To ensure that we can produce reliable estimates disaggregated for domains of interest, we stratify by geographic region, racialized groups and immigrant status.

In order to allow for comparisons and to cover the entire target population, we also sampled individuals who did not self-identify as belonging to a racialized group.

Sampling and sub-sampling:
Within each stratum, a simple random sample was selected.

Data sources

Data collection for this reference period: 2025-04-11 to 2025-06-22

Responding to this survey is voluntary.

Data are collected directly from survey respondents either through an electronic questionnaire (EQ) or through computer assisted telephone interviewing (CATI). First contact is made by an invitation letter in the mail, which provides a link and access code for completing survey electronically. A non-responding individual may receive reminders by mail, by email or by SMS before they are contacted by a Statistics Canada interviewer to complete the questionnaire over the telephone.

Proxy responses are not allowed.

Statistics Canada will use the information provided by respondents from the 2021 Census and data extracted from the Longitudinal Immigration Database (IMDB) to create the survey frame.

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