What's in the profiles:
- age, sex, dwellings, families, marital status and languages for specific geographic areas
- smallest geographic area: Dissemination Area (DA) (definition of a DA)
What you can do with the profiles:
- compare any two geographic areas side-by-side
- map an area
- export tables in several formats: HTML, XML, IVT and CSV/TAB
How to get one specific profile:
- go to the Census Profile page on the Statistics Canada website
- search by postal code, address, or Census geographic code
- use GeoSearch 2011 to find DA number for an area
How to get many profiles, all at once:
What's in the highlight tables:
- a few key indicators from each Census topic
- tables provide counts, % distribution and sometimes % change figures from 2006 Census
- smallest geographic area: Census Subdivision = municipality level (definition of CSD)
What you can do with the highlight tables:
- select specific geographic area(s) and sort columns
- some tables include a "figure": a ready-made chart or graph
These tables typically combine at least four variables to provide a much more in-depth portrait of an area than the Profiles. Many of these variables are broken down to a very fine level of detail. Some tables are available at the Census Tract level, but many are not, due to the need for confidentiality.
An Example of a Topic-Based Tabulation:
Presence of Children (5), Number of Children at Home (8) and Census Family Structure (7) for the Census Families in Private Households (Canada, Provinces/Territories, Census Divisions, and Census Subdivisions)
To make sense of what this table can tell you, it helps to separate out the variables (also called 'dimensions') that it includes:
Working with Topic-Based Tabulations:
When you view this table on the Statistics Canada website (in HTML), you can only manipulate a few of these variables. You can't see every combination. For maximum flexibility, you must download the statistics into CSV or TAB formats to view in a spreadsheet program like Excel, or into IVT format to analyze in Beyond 20/20 software (free download, Windows version only).
The tables on the Statistics Canada website are fairly 'fixed'; you can only customize the tables to a limited extent.
You can export most tables in other formats (for example .csv) for use with spreadsheet software such as Excel.
Many tables are available in Beyond 20/20 (.ivt) format. This software allows you to work with the data to create very customized tables with different cross-tabulations.
Beyond 20/20 has already been downloaded on Library workstations.