Chen, Ruoke
Guay, Mireille
Gilbert, Nicolas L.
Dubé, Eve
Witteman, Holly O.
Hakim, Hina
Article History
Received: 15 May 2023
Accepted: 27 October 2023
First Online: 24 November 2023
Declarations
:
: The survey was carried out in compliance with the <i>Statistics Act</i> and other applicable laws and regulations. The <i>Statistics Act</i> prohibits Statistics Canada and any individual accessing Statistics Canada data from releasing any information it collects that could identify any person, business, or organization, unless consent has been given by the respondent or as permitted by the Act. Various confidentiality rules are applied to all data that are released or published to prevent the identification of survey participants or the publication or disclosure of any other information deemed confidential. If necessary, data are suppressed to prevent direct or residual disclosure of identifiable data.All questionnaires used by Statistics Canada, including the CNICS questionnaire, have to be qualitatively tested and approved by Statistics Canada’s Questionnaire Design and Research Center. This process asks a set of representative participants to assess the content of the questionnaire, for overall understanding and appropriateness. All experimental protocols were approved by Statistics Canada’s Office of Privacy Management and Information Coordination and its Data Ethics Secretariat, which apply many of the same criteria as an IRB when reviewing requests for datasets. In addition, the Health Canada and Public Health Agency of Canada Research Ethics Board was consulted as they would be the IRB of record for this study. We were informed that this study is exempt from REB review pursuant to Article 2.2 of the Tri-Council Policy Statement on Ethical Conduct for Research Involving Humans (ExternalRef removed). Statistics Canada’s CNICS data are considered information that is publicly available through a mechanism set out by legislation or regulation that is protected by law and therefore their use for research purposes does not require REB review, as long as there is no linkage to other datasets.Informed consent was implied if respondents continued to respond to the telephone survey after the interviewer stated: “Your participation in this survey is voluntary and your responses will be kept confidential<b>”.</b>
: Not applicable.
: The authors declare no competing interests.