2016 Canadian Victim Services Indicators: Pilot survey evaluation and recommendations

Survey methodology

The Canadian Victim Services Indicators (CVSI) survey collected data from victim services directorates for the 13 provincial and territorial governments in Canada. The CVSI is an aggregate survey, meaning that there is no information on individual cases, and data are collected and reported for pre-defined categories.

Information was collected directly from staff of the provincial and territorial victim services directorates by means of an Excel-based questionnaire. The questionnaire was accompanied by a detailed reporting guide laying out the standard definitions for each question, and a separate concordance guide showing the relationship between the offence categories in the questionnaire and standard Uniform Crime Reporting Survey (UCR) offence codes used by police. Space was provided in the questionnaire for respondents to write explanations where their information varied from the standard definitions.

Questionnaire testing

English and French questionnaires and reporting guide drafts were emailed for review to victim services representatives in the thirteen (13) provinces and territories on October 23, 2017. Scheduled telephone meetings with the respondents were organized to collect their comments on these documents. A one hour follow-up telephone call (one-on-one) was then conducted with each representative.

Because of the burden for respondents, we did not request that they actually do the work to extract data and complete the questionnaire during this testing phase. We did, however, discuss the process, time and effort that would likely be required. Some of the fundamental data issues outlined later in this document were raised at this stage, in particular, differences related to the definition of a victim and the coverage of victim services by province and territory, concerns about the over-counting of victims where multiple data sources are used and issues with respect to the caseload question.