Non-profits benefiting from data access – Post-Census

Good piece in the Globe on the use of data at the neighbourhood level and how the private sector has partially filled the gap caused by the cancellation of the Census and its replacement by the weaker National Household Survey (which does not offer the same level of granularity – the Census went down to the 250 household level):

“We’re not saying we didn’t need the mandatory census or that these data would be as good as if Statistics Canada had done a mandatory long-form census, but businesses absolutely rely on income and ethnicity data for small areas and Statscan didn’t release them,” said Jan Kestle, president of Environics Analytics.

“It’s easier to do when you’re only five years out from a [mandatory long-form] census. In five years time, we’re going to either need more mandatory questions or we’re going to need better access to good quality administrative data.”

Most people use the company’s data in conjunction with a mapping tool and segmentation analysis, which sorts the population into lifestyle categories such as “Middleburg Managers” and “Young Digerati,” to better understand their habits and tastes. A library, for example, found that despite having a large population of senior citizens, programs advertised to “seniors” were a bust. Having looked more closely at their income and lifestyle data, they targeted the same group as “mature adults” and had much more success.

“Often, the real power is in the melding of the data. They know things about their users, but not their neighbourhood, then they marry them,” said Doug Norris, chief demographer at Environics Analytics.

Non-profits benefiting from data access – The Globe and Mail.