Historical
Methods Sociology 6714H May-June 2006
Professor
Charles Jones cjones@chass.utoronto.ca
The course
meets twice a week: Mondays and Wednesdays: 12:00 to 2:00 pm in room 41 at
The course
will be oriented around several research issues, all related to historical
sociology and data from past Censuses as well as other historical sources such
as memoirs, newspaper articles, parliamentary debates etc. Students will
investigate web sites such as those of the CCRI and IPUMS projects as well as
the National Archives of Canada, the UK Public Records Office and various
genealogically oriented sources. Students will focus on topics such as the
following:
What was the legal, social, household and economic situation of divorced women
in
What kind of paid work was done by women and immigrants before 1914 and how
does this differ from the work they do now?
What was the social, household and economic situation of visible minorities in
How do the social and economic situations of visible minorities in
How have changing understandings of family and ethnic or religions identity
been reflected in the Census?
How does religious affiliation in
How do confidentiality restrictions affect the amount of detail available from
past and current Censuses?
Through examining these research questions students will develop skills in
using library sources and the internet to ask historically oriented
sociological questions. Students will write interim reports that demonstrate how
their research questions evolve over time.
They will
be expected to use SAS or SPSS and also SDA (Survey Documentation and
Analysis), a set of programs available on the CHASS computer system. SDA was
developed by the Computer-assisted Survey Methods program at UC Berkeley.
Various Census data are available in SDA format on CHASS, including a sample
from the 1871 Census of Canada.
We will use
the CCNET course management system to distribute course materials. Over the
period of the course we will gradually migrate to the Blackboard learning
management system.
Most of the journal articles for this course are available electronically via
e-Resources through the
Recommended text
Kertzer, David and Dominique Arel.
(Eds.). Census and Identity: The Politics
of Race, Ethnicity and Language in National Censuses.
Optional
Curtis,
Bruce. (2001). The Politics of Population: State Formation,
Statistics, and the Census of
Katz,
Michael B. (1975). The People of
Meeting 1)
Web sources for research on social history: from the Toronto Star online
back-issues to the Dictionary of National Biography and the National Archives
of Canada: from the IPUMS Website to www.OntarioRoots.com
Kertzer, David and Dominique Arel. (Eds.). Census and
Identity: The Politics of Race, Ethnicity and Language in National Censuses.
Meeting 2) Laboratory session with CCRI, IPUMS and related web sites as well as
with online newspaper archives. Technical issues in managing .zip, .tar and
other compressed file formats.
Darroch,
Gordon and Evelyn Ruppert. Proposed Criteria
for Collecting and Indexing Contextual Data for 1911 (Newspapers, political
debates, government documents, etc.) Draft of March 14, 2003.
Meeting 3) Back to basics: population distribution by
age and gender from 1921 to 2001. Demonstration of how Beyond 2020 can be used
and discussion of the sources of historical Census data. How does
Ruus, Laine. “Canadian
Census Questions Since Confederation”. Web document.
Meeting 4) SPSS files from the Census: using IPUMS, IPUMS-International and the
North Atlantic Population Project data files. Workshop on uncompressing files
from .zip and .tar formats.
Hall, Patricia Kelly, et al. “IPUMS Metadata: documenting 150 years of Census microdata”. Historical
Methods, 32, 3 (Summer 1999): 111-118.
Meeting 5) Review of the 1901 Census (Baskerville and Sager)
and the Canadian Families Project.
Baskerville, Peter. “Displaying the Working Class: the 1901
Census of
Meeting 6) The Census as a Historical Source: household composition, issues of
family and work: qualitative and quantitative approaches. What do we know and
how do we know it? How many female-headed single parent
families from 1900 to 1921. How many female physicians
around 1900. Coding issues with special reference to
key variables. Relationship to the head of the
household. National origin, visible minority status
and religion. Occupation and other aspects of making a
living.
Bradbury, Bettina. “Single Parenthood in the Past: Canadian census categories,
1891-1951. Historical Methods, 33, 4
(Fall 2000): 211-217.
Inwood,
Kris and Richard Reid. “Gender and Occupational
Identity in a Canadian Census”. Historical
Methods, 34, 2 (Spring 2001): 57-70.
Meeting 7) Individuals, families, households and dwellings: retrieving
appropriate data from data files in SPSS, SAS and STATA.
Meeting 8) The 1871 Census (Darroch
and Ornstein), the 1881 Census (Dillon) and the 1911 Census (CCRI).
Meeting 9) Regions and Neighbourhoods; Townships,
Census Divisions and Census Sub-Divisions: Bringing Geography into Social
History: Historical Atlas of
Meeting 10) Concepts, Definitions and Documentation. Dwellings, households, families and individuals. Large
dwellings (“group quarters”): barracks, hospitals, prisons, work camps.
Meeting 11) Sampling issues: sample stratification by microfilm reel, simple
random samples of dwellings or “group quarters” and clustered samples of
individuals.
Meeting 12) Student presentations
Meeting 13) Student presentations.
Students will find it very useful to consult with the staff in Government
Documents and particularly in the Data Library, both at Robarts
Library, 5th floor.
Assessment
Three brief reports on required activities with respect to different aspects of
the course content: 15% each. One or more brief reports could be in the form of
a PowerPoint presentation or a large poster (as a PowerPoint slide) suitable
for presentation at a conference (examples will be provided on the CCNET and
Blackboard course sites).
Draft of final paper which might be an expanded version of one of the progress
reports: 10%. Consult with the instructor about this.
Final paper: 45%. The paper is due on July 21st at the latest
Assignments
and Homework
Required Activities
1) Go to Robarts Library and find out which
newspapers are available on microfilm around the periods of enumeration and
release of results for the 1921 Census of Canada. Search selected newspapers
for stories that bear upon Census issues. Capture those stories using a digital
camera. Report on your experiences.
2) Register as an IPUMS (US data) user
Download at least two tiny IPUMS
Register as an IPUMS (international data) user
Download at least two tiny IPUMS international data files.
Report the IPUMS project and on your experiences as a user.
3) Use of Beyond 2020
Use the U of T data library Web site to search aggregate data tables from the
2001 and previous Censuses of Canada and reorganize them using the browser
helper application called Beyond 2020.
You will find that the old Nation series files (1996 Census products) are now
called 'Canadian overview tables' in the 2001 Census products, the old
Dimensions series (1996) are now called 'Special interest tables' (2001) and
the old basic summary tables (1996) are called basic cross tabulations (2001).
For the 2001 Census products release, Statistics Canada calls these three types
of tables Topic-based tabulations'.
All are linked at:
http://www.chass.utoronto.ca/datalib/cc01/cc01.htm#agg
Again, report on your experiences.
4) Comparison of
The instructor will provide you with a data file for the 1901 Census (courtesy
of Professors Baskerville and Sager). Bearing in mind that that this is a 5%
sample of dwellings: also that there are confidentiality issues with recently
collected Census data, write a report that compares Canada in 1901 with Canada
in 2001 (using aggregate tables available via the University of Toronto Data
Library Web site). This is much more than an exercise in data analysis, since
you will have to consider the changes in political geography between 1901 and
2001, as well as the different ways of conceptualizing and asking about family,
gender, race and ethnicity at the two time periods.