The National Survey of Giving, Volunteering, and Participating (NSGVP) was undertaken to better understand how Canadians support individuals and communities on their own or through their involvement with charitable and nonprofit organizations.

The NSGVP was conducted as a supplement to the Labour Force Survey in November 1997. For this survey, thousands of Canadians aged 15 and over were asked how they: gave money and other resources to individuals and to organizations; volunteered time to help others and to enhance their communities; and participated in the practices which help give substance to active citizenship.

Note: Because of anomalies found in the data, Statistics Canada has issued a new version of the 1997 National Survey of Giving, Volunteering and Participating (NSGVP) data files. There are three files affected - the main answer file (SGVP.TXT), the volunteer event file (VOLNTR.TXT) and the giver file (GIVE.TXT ).Note that the record length of the sgvp.txt file is now 553.

Three files were produced for this survey: the main file (SVGP), the volunteer file (VOLNTR), and the charitable donation file (GIVE).

DOCUMENTATION:

• User guide, provided as a PDF file, for use with Adobe Acrobat viewer

• Questionnaire, provided as a PDF file, for use with Adobe Acrobat viewer

• Errata file, documenting changes to the data file as released.

The codebook is also available in print form in the Government Documents, Maps and Data Department on the third floor of the Harriet Irving Library.

DATA FILES:

MAIN FILE (SVGP)

The main file contains one record per Respondent. All questions except for those on the VOLNTR and GIVER files are located here. In addition, summary derived variables from the VOLNTR and GIVER have been created on the SVGP file. There are 18,301 cases, with 330 variables in the file.

DATA:

NSGVP sav file, provided as a zipped file for use with SPSS
NSGVP data file, ascii file provided as a zipped file for use with SPSS or SAS syntax file
SPSS syntax file for NSGVP, provided as a zipped file for use with ascii data file.

Th volunteer organization answer file contains 0-3 records per person who volunteered (1 per organization the respondent volunteered with). This file contains information on the type of organization (by 3 digit codes) for which the individual volunteered and the number of hours volunteered for the organization. Summary variables from this file have been derived and are located on the SVGP file. Use the variable IDNUM to link with other files. There are 18,282 records and 43 variables in this file.

DATA:

VOLNTEER sav file, provided as a zipped file for use with SPSS
VOLNTR data file, ascii file provided as a zipped file for use with SPSS or SAS syntax file
SPSS syntax file for VOLNTR, provided as a zipped file for use with ascii data file.

The charitable donation answer file contains 0-n records per person who made a charitable donation. Each record represents 1 donation made to a charitable organization. For each donation made, this file contains information on the type of organization to whom the donation was made as well as the value of the donation. Summary variables from this file have been derived and are located on the SVGP file. Use the variable IDNUM to link with other files. There are 74,041 records, and 15 variables in the file.

DATA:

GIVE sav file, provided as a zipped file for use with SPSS
GIVE data file, ascii file provided as a zipped file for use with SPSS or SAS syntax file
SPSS syntax file for GIVE, provided as a zipped file for use with ascii data file.

Steps to Obtain Data Files Electronically: