By Megan Stacey
First, they found a way to release the "trapped" data from the Canadian census over the last 70 years.
Then, Western researchers translated the information into an easy-to-use format by creating an online map and portal illustrating the changes across the country.
The potential is immense.
Click on a neighbourhood, and you can find population details on everything from age to household income to religion to transportation choices. The UNI-CEN Canadian Neighbourhood Change Explorer allows researchers to track shifts in census areas dating back to 1951.
"There's all kinds of trapped data that people can't really use, because it's stuck in ancient formats, practically back to the punch card. All that information is just sitting there," said Western political science professor Zack Taylor, who led the project.
The census is conducted every four years by Statistics Canada.
The new platform was created by researchers at Western's Network for Economic and Social Trends (NEST), an umbrella group for eight research centres within the Faculty of Social Science. The team partnered with Esri, a geographical analysis software company and Mitacs, a non-profit research agency that works to connect academics, government and public and private sectors.
To create the new digital tool, Taylor and his team had to grapple with a major challenge: Each census release isn't necessarily compatible with the one before it.
The questions posed to Canadian households change from one census to the next. So do geographic boundaries, like those of cities or individual neighbourhoods. Those tweaks, even when minor, make direct comparisons difficult. To further complicate analyses, census data is often shared in different formats.
A screenshot showing one elment of the UNI-CEN Neighbourhood Change Explorer platform.
"While it is possible to join things up across time, to a limited degree, it's really hard to do over a long period of time," Taylor said.
"With support of the Faculty of Social Science dean's office, we started to convert this data that's there but rarely used, because it's so inaccessible in a common format. But then we thought, how do we help people understand the potential of this? How do we dramatize the use of it?'"
Not just for researchers
Taylor hopes the UNI-CEN Canadian Neighbourhood Change Explorer will be used well beyond the university environment. It can provide key details to government departments, high school students and non-profit organizations seeking data on the people they serve, he said.
Taylor also wants to see teaching materials developed to encourage use of the tool.
Among the population data that can be mined:
- Age
- Types of dwellings and when they were built
- Commute to work
- Education
- Household size
- Languages spoken
- Mobility
- Occupation and income
"This is a great example of projects led by NEST researchers that will benefit communities across the country and support Western's strategic priority of serving the public good." - Victoria Esses, psychology professor and director of NEST
A previous NEST project digitized census data from 1951 to 1966, which helped feed the new tool. Without that work, there would be no way to access early census data online. Before 1971, digital results weren't shared by Statistics Canada.
"We've been able to pull that back in time and really show a picture of the whole post-World War Two era. I think that makes it a great educational tool," Taylor said.
Exploratory tool' to challenge assumptions
Taylor's team hasn't had time yet to use the portal as a research tool, but they see the power of the data they've collected.
"For researchers, this could function as an exploratory tool that allows people to quickly check things out before they dig into the original data," Taylor said.
There are hundreds of data points to track across Canadian neighbourhoods - or what are known as "census tracts" - from the 15 national surveys between 1951 and 2021. Taylor and his team worked to pick categories that were consistent from year to year, since so many questions are changed between each census.
He knows the platform will challenge his own ideas about London, Ont.
"I'm excited to go to places that I know and say, OK, let's test some assumptions about this. Let's see the change in my neighborhood or certain other neighborhoods where I've lived.'"
