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Canada Survey of Giving, Volunteering and Participating, 2004 – User Guide
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Background
In the course of their busy lives and many commitments, millions of Canadians make a conscious effort to
contribute to others and their communities through charitable giving, volunteering their time to charitable
and non-profit organizations and by helping individual Canadians directly on their own. In 1997, the
National Survey of Giving, Volunteering and Participating (NSGVP) provided the first comprehensive look
at the contributions that Canadians made to one another through their gifts of time and money. The
NSGVP was developed through a unique partnership of federal government departments and non-profit
and voluntary organizations that included the Canadian Centre for Philanthropy (now operating under the
name of Imagine Canada), Canadian Heritage, Health Canada, Human Resources Development Canada,
Statistics Canada and Volunteer Canada. Using a similar framework, this survey was conducted again in
2000 as part of the federal government’s Voluntary Sector Initiative. In 2001, the federal government
provided funding to establish a permanent survey program at Statistics Canada on charitable giving,
volunteering and participating. The survey itself was renamed the Canada Survey of Giving, Volunteering
and Participating (CSGVP) to distinguish it from surveys in other countries.
The establishment of a permanent series of surveys provided an opportunity to review the design of the
survey instrument to ensure that it would provide the highest quality information on an ongoing basis.
Consultations were held with a variety of stakeholders from the charitable and non-profit sector,
government and the academic community to identify ways to improve the survey. In 2004, survey data
were collected in the North (Yukon, Northwest Territories and Nunavut) for the first time, where a
representative sample of 1,332 respondents aged 15 and older participated in the survey. The sample
size in the 10 provinces increased from 14,724 respondents in 2000 to 20,832 in 2004 improving the
ability to provide estimates both at the provincial level and in the larger urban areas. The questionnaire
was revised in a number of ways, based on experience gained from the earlier surveys. Some questions
were changed to improve their clarity for respondents. Other questions were added to collect new
information of interest. A number of questions were also dropped from the survey. Because the survey is
now being conducted on a permanent basis, it may be possible to cycle sets of questions in and out of
the survey.
The survey platform was also changed. The NSGVP was administered to a sub-sample of respondents
to Statistics Canada’s Labour Force Survey (LFS). Because of concerns about demands being placed on
LFS respondents, the provincial component of the 2004 CSGVP was conducted as a Random Digit
Dialling (RDD) survey, in which respondents were recruited specifically to participate in the CSGVP.
The 2004 CSGVP provides a new way of measuring giving, volunteering and participating. It replaces the
way these behaviours were measured in the 1997 and 2000 NSGVPs. Because of these changes, it is
not appropriate to compare the results from the 2004 CSGVP with the previous NSGVP surveys.
Special Surveys Division
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