Holiday Closures 

Please note that the RDC will be closed all day on the upcoming holidays:

• Friday, March 29th for Good Friday
• Monday, April 1st for Easter Monday

 And there will be NO extended hours on:

• Tuesday, April 16th 
• Thursday, April 18th

Saturday Hours - On Demand

We will be offering Saturday hours this month. We will be open on an 'appointment' basis, only if requested. Please sign up via the online booking system as usual. 

Offered dates for Saturday hours this month are:

• Saturday, April 13th - 12pm to 4pm

4th McMaster Statistics Canada Research Data Centre Showcase 2024

Thursday May 16, 2024 10AM to 3PM
Community Room, main floor, L.R. Wilson Hall, McMaster University

The event is open at no cost to all McMaster students, staff and faculty. Please reserve your spot here via our Eventbrite page.

The Statistics Canada Research Data Centre (RDC), located in L.R. Wilson Hall, houses a large number of confidential micro-data files. These include the census, numerous surveys related to society, health and education, as well as business (including firm level), immigration, taxation, health and vital statistics administrative data. There are also numerous linked micro-data files including survey and administrative.

The showcase has two parts. The morning session will describe the RDC and its partnership with Data Services in the Mills Library. It will also consists of brief presentations on GIS applications, the use of RDC data to examine the characteristics of medical professionals, an update on linked micro-data files, and RDC data output replication.

Following lunch (which will be provided), the afternoon session will consist of a series of brief presentations from current RDC researchers highlighting their work.

The event is open to all McMaster students, staff and faculty and will be of interest to those working in the RDC as well as potential researchers who are considering making use of Statistics Canada's micro-data files. RDC staff will be available throughout the day to answer questions on the data files highlighted and others in our collection.

RDC Showcase 2024 - Call for Presenters!

The McMaster RDC will be holding its 4th ‘Showcase’ on Thursday May 16, 2024 in the Community Room of L.R. Wilson Hall (main floor) - see announcement above.

The afternoon session (1PM to 3PM) will highlight the work of researchers. We have space for 4 to 5 presentations of about 20 minutes each.

The criteria are that presenters (students or faculty) be currently active in the centre, and be at a stage to discuss on-going or nearly completed work. The session is an opportunity for students to sharpen their presentation skills and get valuable feedback prior to the Spring 2024 conference season.

If you are interested, please send Peter a 150-word abstract (including title and name of the data-set(s) you are using) by April 19th to rdc@mcmaster.ca

Researcher Congrats & Kudos

Congratulations to Boris Kralj, Rabiul Islam, and Arthur Sweetman, researchers here at the McMaster RDC, on a recent paper publication!

Their work, "Long-term trends in the work hours of physicians in Canada" was recently published in the Canadian Medical Association Journal. It used data from the Labour Force Survey.

New data sets at the RDC: 

Future to Discover (FTD) project

The Future to Discover (FTD) project data file is a rich longitudinal database containing information on a cohort of secondary school students that has been followed for 6 years. The FTD Project randomly assigned these secondary school students to three program groups: no intervention; one intervention; or two interventions. The target population includes all Grade nine students in the province of New Brunswick and Manitoba who are Canadian citizens or landed immigrants to Canada.  

The overall objective of the Future to Discover Project is to try to understand whether better information about career choices and/or a promise of financial incentives can encourage students who might not normally decide to pursue post-secondary education (PSE), to complete high school and go on to PSE.

The FTD cohort data files were linked to the Discharge Abstract Database (DAD), the National Ambulatory Care Reporting System (NACRS), the Canadian Vital Statistics – Death Database (CVSD), completing Phase 1 of this project record linkage project. The FTD cohort data files were linked in Phase 2 to the Hospital Mental Health Database (HMHDB), the Hospital Mental Health and Substance Use (HMHSU), and the Integrated Criminal Court Survey (ICCS). 

For more information on this survey, please see https://www23.statcan.gc.ca/imdb/p2SV.pl?Function=getSurvey&SDDS=5066. 

If you would like more information on how to submit a proposal for access to this data see https://www.statcan.gc.ca/eng/microdata/data-centres/access.  For more information about the RDC program please contact your local RDC analyst.