a brief guide to using the statistics in this database
starting with a research question
Statistical tables begin with a research question based on what we would like to know about a particular relationship. In the case of this database, the kinds of questions we asked had to do with relationships of gender and work. For example, we might ask:
"Are part-time workers in Canada more likely to be male or female?"
This tells us:
- that gender is an important factor here (male or female)
- that we are looking for a form of employment, in this case part-time jobs
- that we are only looking at Canadian data
- and that we are trying to draw a conclusion based on the relationship between them, in this case who is more (or less) likely to be working part-time
building a table
To move from a research question to a statistical table, we begin with establishing variables. A variable is a property of something which can have different values. For example, a variable to answer our research question above is gender (Statistics Canada uses the term "sex"", so that is what we will use from now on). "Sex" can be broken down into two parts: male and female. Each variable should be exhaustive (in other words, it covers all the ways the category can be expressed: male, female, and both), and should be mutually exclusive (males can be differentiated from females).
So, our variables to answer the above question would be:
Sex | Both | Male | Female |
Form of employment | All forms | Full time | part-time |
