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About the Census of Agriculture
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Questionnaire development
Planning for the next census begins even before the current census cycle
is finished.
User consultations
Evaluating the suggestions
Questionnaire content and development
User consultations
User input played an important role in planning the 2001 Census of
Agriculture. Through a series of workshops held across Canada in 1998,
users provided
recommendations for the types of questions they would like to see on
the 2001 Census questionnaire. A cross-section of data users were also
surveyed
by mail and asked to rate the importance of proposed new census questions.
The data requirements identified during these consultations were used
to develop the content and design of the census questionnaire.
Evaluating the suggestions
Before going for testing, the workshop and submission suggestions had
to meet certain criteria before being judged suitable for inclusion
in
the Census of Agriculture:
Is this topic of national interest?
Are data worthwhile at more detailed geographic levels than provincial
or national?
Will farmers easily understand the question?
Can the question be answered - that is, do the farm
operators have the information to answer the question?
Will farm operators be willing to answer it?
Will there be a broad demand for the data generated
by the question?
Can the question be answered by either "Yes,"
"No," or a quantitative response?
Questionnaire content and development
Although the questionnaire is updated every census to reflect data
users' changing requirements as identified through the Canada-wide
workshops,
certain basic or core questions appear on every census. These questions
- such as those on farm operators, land area, livestock numbers
and crop areas - are considered essential by Statistics Canada and
other
major users of Census of Agriculture data. Repeating basic questions
allows the census to measure change over time, while adding new questions
and dropping others allows data to be collected that reflect new technologies
and structural changes in the agriculture industry. For example, a
supplementary
question asking what types of computer applications farmers use in
addition to whether they use a computer was new for 2001. Also new
was a section
on certified organic production. Other sections, such as those on farm
machinery and equipment, livestock, land management, and operating
expenses,
were modified or refined to reflect farm operators' use and understanding
of farming terms and practices.
New or changed questions were developed in head office and tested
a number of times with farm operators across Canada through one-on-one
interviews on their farms and in focus groups. Farm operators selected
for testing reflected regional diversity - in types of agriculture,
production techniques, languages and terminology, and in policies or
issues that could affect the sensitivity of questions. This testing
proved that some questions would not perform well on the census, and
that the wording of other questions would require fine-tuning. Respondent
burden, content testing results, user priorities and budgets were all
taken into consideration in determining the final content of the
2001 Census of Agriculture questionnaire. It was approved by Cabinet
in the spring of 2000.
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