The survey was conducted by Statistics Canada, with resulting data to be analyzed and published by the Department of the Solicitor General. The survey addressed itself only to certain municipalities within each CMA, usually the largest city. The survey was designed to provide estimates of incidents, persons, and households. Incident estimates are the numbers of the various crimes for example 5,500 break and enters. Person estimates are those used to describe characteristics of the population sampled, for example, 20,000 persoms were victims of assault. Household estimates indicate the number or proportion of households with a characteristic, for example 20,000 apartments were broken into

The file has several weighting factors that should be used depending on the type of characteristic being estimated. These are explained in detail in the methodology report. In addition, the file has been structured to permit those various analyses. The file contains records for each person in the sample whether they were a victim or non-victim as well as multiple records for persons who were victims more than once during the reference period. For example, a person who was a non-victim of the crimes included has one record on the file containing information collected in the screening form. A person who was the victim of only one incident will also have one record which would contain screening form information and details about the incident. A person who was the victim of 6 incidents during the reference period has 6 records. Each record contains the screening form information and details about a distinct incident. 

Printed codebook available in UT/DLS, Robarts Library, room 5038F