2016 Canadian Victim Services Indicators: Pilot survey evaluation and recommendations
Respondent feedback
Following the release of the publication, we solicited feedback from respondents asking for comments on their ability to provide the information requested and whether it would be feasible to make changes (and in what time frame) to be able to improve their ability to provide the requested information. Although comments were not received from many respondents, the comments we received reflected a wide variety of jurisdictions. The main comments can be summed up as follows:
- No clear standard victim definition or unit of count: some jurisdictions were unable to distinguish primary and secondary victims; some have only a count of cases, others can count individual victims, challenges in capturing services for ongoing cases (not new referrals in the survey year)
- There were some specific concerns about age definitions and other gender
- Some jurisdictions had difficulty matching detailed offence categories
- Some collected information on a specific domestic violence category (domestic, FV, IPV) without full information on the offences involved (especially as there may be repeat incidents and more than one offence involved over time).
- Challenge identifying most serious offence where there are multiple charges.
- Caseload, the services for which information was available differed by jurisdiction as a result of differences in coverage.
General comments
- Respondents felt that while there is a desire for consistent and comparable data, they would like to see agreement on the standards and a demonstration of the pertinence of these standards to their own objectives before they make changes.
- Respondents need to balance operational requirements, jurisdictional reporting requirements and national data needs.
- Given IT constraints and costs, detailed changes are not feasible for most jurisdictions at this time. Because of the costs and effort required to provide the data, it is important that its relevance and use is clear.
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