Note that the data extracted from this file should be considered exploratory and should not be published (see below).
The public use microdata file (PUMF) for the Canadian Housing Survey (CHS) provides information on core housing need, dwelling characteristics, housing tenure, perceptions on economic hardship from housing costs, dwelling and neighbourhood satisfaction, housing moves and intentions to move, community engagement, life and community satisfaction and socio-demographic characteristics. The survey features an oversample of households in social and affordable housing.
Note that the data extracted from this file should be considered exploratory and should not be published. It is not possible to assess the quality of the data generated by this file, as the bootstrap weights required to calculate coefficients of variation are not included. These files are only available via Statistics Canada's Research Data Centres.
This PUMF can also be downloaded directly from the Statistics Canada website. In the CDP version, we have included an Excel file (CHS Crosstabs.xlsx) that has taken the .txt formatted data and put it into an Excel Pivot table. The original data have also been imported into an Excel worksheet.
Each record in the PUMF corresponds to one respondent's responses. Users will need to have the Data Dictionary on hand (included in the file package) in order to interpret the variable names and values. Make sure that any table you create with the Pivot Table includes the variable PFWEIGHT, which assigns a household weight to each record - otherwise the estimates are not being correctly formulated.