6.1 Data and sample files

The Project Big Life Planning Tool currently accepts 2013/2014 Public Use Microdata File of the Canadian Community Health Survey (CCHS) in ‘.csv’ format.

6.1.1 What is the Canadian Community Health Survey?

The Canadian Community Health Survey (CCHS) is an annual cross-sectional survey preformed by Statistics Canada. The CCHS is Canada’s main population health survey. It collects information related to health status, health care utilization, and health determinants for the Canadian population. Data is shared at the the sub-provincial geographic level (health region or combination of health regions).

6.1.2 Why can the Project Big Life Planning Tool only accept the 2013/2014 Canadian Community Health Survey data?

Each year the CCHS changes a few variables it captures. This makes CCHS data sets from every year other then 2013/2014 partly incompatible with the algorithms used by the Project Big Life Planning Tool.

6.1.3 Can I use other population health survey data sets?

Yes you can use other population health survey data sets but you have to transform these data set to the 2013/2014 CCHS format.

To transform CCHS cycles the Project Big Life Team developed an R-package CCHS-flow. This package transforms CCHS variables from cycles 2001 to 2014 into harmonized and consistent versions. To access or learn more about the CCHS flow visit CRAN packages (https://cran.r-project.org/web/packages/cchsflow/index.html).

6.1.4 Sample Files

There are three sample files:

  • CCHS-2013-1-percent
  • CCHS-2013-10-percent
  • CCHS-2013-100-percent

Each sample file is from the 2013/2014 CCHS PUMF datafile and contains: 1%, 10% or 100% of the respondents. Each sample file contains all the variables (survey questions).