Fact sheet: Online survey results for the National Monument for Canada’s Mission in Afghanistan

• The Online Survey on Finalists’ Design Proposals for the National Monument to Canada’s Mission in Afghanistan was conducted between May 20, 2021, and June 9, 2021.
• The online survey was designed to provide veterans, stakeholders, and interested Canadians an avenue to share their opinions on the monument designs.
• The information collected was among the tools used by the jury to help inform their selection of a winning proposal for a National Monument to Canada’s Mission in Afghanistan.
• A total of 12,048 veterans, stakeholders, and interested Canadians shared their opinions on the design proposals through the online survey. Canadian Heritage utilized non-probabilistic sampling by promoting the survey on its social media channels, while Veterans Affairs Canada promoted the survey to Canadian military and veteran communities.
• The survey itself included a number of demographic questions that were used to better understand who responded to the survey and to disaggregate the final results.
• It is important to note that the online survey conducted by Canadian Heritage utilized a non-probabilistic sample and was never intended to be a fulsome collection of opinions from the general population.
• The collected survey data and the resulting statistics are not representative of the entire Canadian population, nor the entire population of Canadian veterans.
• The collected non-probabilistic survey data and the resulting statistics are only reflective of those individuals that participated in the online survey exercise.

Additional information on surveys

• Surveys are a common data collection method in social research, offering various approaches. One way to categorize different types of surveys is by sampling method, which is how participants are chosen.
• There are two main sampling types: probabilistic, which involves random selection and allows for population-wide generalization, and non-probabilistic, which employs non-random methods for faster and cheaper data collection but cannot be used for population-wide generalization.
• Regardless of the sampling method, systematic data collection is at the core of all surveys.