The housing experiences of new Canadians: Insights from the Longitudinal Survey of Immigrants to Canada (LSIC)
Appendix A: About the Longitudinal Survey of Immigrants to Canada (LSIC)
The study sample is drawn from the Longitudinal Survey of Immigrants to Canada (LSIC), a three-wave study of 12,040 people aged 15 and over (at wave 1) who were randomly selected from the approximately 165,000 immigrants that settled in Canada between October 2000 and September 2001. Respondents were interviewed at six months, 2 years, and 4 years after arrival, and to be part of the LSIC sample, respondents needed to have applied for admission to Canada through a mission abroad (Statistics Canada 2003).
The sample was created using a two-stage stratified sampling method. The first stage involved the selection of Immigrating Units (IU) using a probability proportional to size method. The second stage involved the selection of one IU member within each selected IU. The selected member of the IU is called the longitudinal respondent (LR). Only the LR is followed throughout the survey.
This report reduced the full LSIC sample to contain only respondents with valid information on housing variables of interest.
Although an excellent dataset, there are some issues. First, attrition rates are noteworthy, with only 9500 and 7716 people participating in waves 2 and 3, respectively. One of the consequences of this sample attrition is that there is a bias in the sample that grows across waves. Furthermore, this report looks only at respondents who were present in all three waves, and readers are urged to keep this in mind when reading the results.
The Longitudinal Survey of Immigrants to Canada (LSIC) was established in response to the growing need for information on immigrants to Canada. Particular emphasis is given to the settlement process and the factors that influence immigrants’ ability to integrate and adapt to Canadian society, and the services used by immigrants to facilitate the transition. The completed survey consists of three interviews (waves): the first of these was conducted six months after the immigrant’s arrival in Canada, with subsequent interviews occurring two and four years after their arrival. Only immigrants who respond to the wave one interview were traced for the wave two interview; only those who respond to the second wave interview were traced and interviewed for wave three. The methodology and data quality can be found in the Microdata User Guide – Longitudinal Survey of Immigrants to Canada – wave 1.Footnote 28
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