Evidence of meeting #38 for Status of Women in the 40th Parliament, 3rd session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was data.
A recording is available from Parliament.
Representative, Senior Vice-President and Chief Demographer, Environics Analytics, Marketing Research and Intelligence Association
It's voluntary; however, they adjust their surveys by using that mandatory census in order to make it accurate, and they are concerned that without that standard to adjust to, there will be more inaccuracy in their data.
Conservative
Mike Wallace Conservative Burlington, ON
Do they have a rule that they work by so that it's accurate within so many points, or something like that?
Representative, Senior Vice-President and Chief Demographer, Environics Analytics, Marketing Research and Intelligence Association
Every survey has a certain inaccuracy about it because of its sample size. One doesn't really know what the effect will be of not having the gold standard.
Conservative
Mike Wallace Conservative Burlington, ON
If the national survey has a bigger sample size and a bigger return rate, is there not potential for it to be more accurate?
Representative, Senior Vice-President and Chief Demographer, Environics Analytics, Marketing Research and Intelligence Association
No. The sample size is not related to the bias and the accuracy. The sample size is one aspect of accuracy, but the bias, which doesn't go away regardless of whether you up the sample size, is still there.
Conservative
Mike Wallace Conservative Burlington, ON
I agree with you.
We had a presentation from another organization saying that if we sent an all-English survey into a French community, the survey would be useless, and I would agree. I thought it was a lousy example, because whether you send two or two million English surveys into an all-French community, you're going to get a lousy return.
Do you not agree that building biases into the survey is something that...? Your organization tries to remove the bias piece because it automatically affects the results. Is that not correct?
Representative, Senior Vice-President and Chief Demographer, Environics Analytics, Marketing Research and Intelligence Association
That's right.
Conservative
Conservative
Conservative
The Vice-Chair Conservative Cathy McLeod
Okay. We won't have time to go into another round.
I'd like to thank all the witnesses for coming and taking the time to present on this very important topic.
We'll suspend for a minute, and then we have about five minutes of updating.
[Proceedings continue in camera]