Canadian Statistics and Microdata for the Social Sciences

This workshop is open to all. Graduate students register using GradProSkills. Everyone else register on this page.

This workshop will focus on the main sources of social statistics in Canada, namely Statistics Canada's Website, more specifically the Data section and the Canadian Census. Provincial statistics (Institut de la Statistique du Québec) will also be mentioned. The second part of the presentation will present the concept of microdata and introduce students to data available through the Data Liberation Initiative (DLI). We will review the best methods to identify relevant surveys. The various types of data files (PUMFs, Master Files) will be described and students will be shown how to access those files via the Odesi database or by going to the Research Data Centre at McGill (QICSS). There will be a demonstration of Odesi which will focus on searching the platform for surveys and individual variables and on downloading datasets and associated documentation.

Learning Outcomes

1. Students will become familiar with the main Canadian sources of aggregate statistics and microdata
2. Students will differentiate between aggregate statistics and Microdata
3. Students will be able to perform searches for microdata sets at the survey and variable levels