2006 Community Profiles

Protecting confidentiality

Random rounding

To ensure confidentiality, the values, including totals, are randomly rounded either up or down to a multiple of '5' or '10'. To understand these data, you must be aware that each individual value is rounded. As a result, when these data are summed or grouped, the total value may not match the individual values since totals and sub-totals are independently rounded. Similarly, percentages, which are calculated on rounded data, may not necessarily add up to 100%.

Area and data suppression

In addition to random rounding, area and data suppression has been adopted to further protect the confidentiality of individual respondents' personal information.

Area and data suppression results in the deletion of all information for geographic areas with populations below a specified size. For example, areas with a population of less than 40 persons are suppressed. If the community searched has a population of less than 40 persons, only the total population counts will be available. Whenever income data are shown for those areas with populations below 250 persons, or where the number of private households is less than 40, income data are suppressed. If a community searched has less than 250 persons, or if the number of private households is less than 40, the income data will not be available. All suppressed cells and associated averages, medians and standard errors of average income have been replaced with zeros. In all cases, suppressed data are included in the appropriate higher-level aggregate subtotals and totals.

To view the extent to which data are suppressed, see 'suppression criteria.'

Return to previous page