In order to apply the Townsend Index to the GVRD minor adjustments had to be made to adjust for variations within the GVRD census data and the original index framework.

Unemployment

Unemployment was calculated by the percentage of all economically active residents over 15 years of age who are unemployed.

·      Total population 15 years and over that is in the labour force (20% sample)

·      Total population 15 years and over that is in the labour force but unemployed (20% sample)

Because all factors were weighted equally, each factor has an assigned weight of 25%.

Car Ownership

There is some controversy using this variable. The British Columbia Census does not account for individuals who own a car. This information is counted as the number of individuals who drive to work. Consequently, a family could own a car, but choose to take public transportation to and from the workplace. We chose to use the number of households against the total number of employed labour force 15 years to represent the number of persons that drive a vehicle to work. There is a tendency for skewness by integrating only people from the labour force as this excludes the elderly, unemployed and so on.

The following variables were used:

·      Total employed labour force 15 years and over by mode of transportation (20% of the sample data)

·      Number of males that use a car, truck, or van as driver

·      Number of females that use a car, truck, or van as driver

Owner Occupation

The owner occupation refers to the percentage of households that are not owner occupied. For the calculation the following variables were used:

·      Total number of occupied private dwellings (20% sample data)

·      Number of rented dwellings

·      Number of Band housing

 Overcrowding