DOI: 10.3886/e120528v2
title: Public Opinion on Ethical Investing in Canada

description: The purpose of this study was to create a comprehensive database of survey questions on the attitudes of Canadians regarding ethical investing. The data referenced in this study is from the period 1994 to 2019. The majority of the data in this study is specific to Canada but some surveys included in the study had a global focus including Canada. <br>
description: This section outlines the approach used to gather survey questions for inclusion in the dataset. Datasets for this study were collected from ODESI, Ipsos-Reid, Scholars Portal Dataverse, and Abacus. In addition to the databases, a general search was conducted on the search engine Google. Searches were also conducted from the following organizational websites: Environics, Gallup, Compass, Forum Research and ICPSR, but the results were not used in the datasets. For searches conducted on ODESI, all collections were selected (Statistics Canada, Public Opinion Polls, CORA, ICPSR, Canadian Dataverses, and other data), and the time period was set to include all survey results. For searches conducted on other databases, such as Ipsos-Reid and Abacus, the relevant terms were inputted in the search tool. For searches conducted on Google, key terms were also used in the search tool. <br><br>The following terms were used in searches to find public opinion survey questions related to ethical investing: environmental impact bonds ethical investing, ethical investments, ethical portfolios, ESG, environment, green investing, green investments, social and governance investing, impact investing, impact investments, responsible investing, shareholder activism, sustainable investing, sustainable investments, socially conscious investing, social impact investing, social impact investments, socially responsible investing and SRI. <br><br>All surveys were reviewed by Onomo Ogbe and Jennifer Peers to determine if they contained questions on ethical investing. Any survey data related to ethical investing was recorded in a word document for review by the third member of the research team (Anthony Piscitelli) who made the final determination of which questions would be included in the database. <br><br>The word document file “ethical investing term tracker” contains a record of the search results for this study. Originally there were two-term tracker files so that the two researchers could each record data separately. The intention of having separate files was to maximize the potential for more survey results and a greater variety of results. Once the term tracker files had been separately completed, they were consolidated into one. The term tracker file kept a record of the date searched, the number of results found, the question, the variables (answers), who was asked, and the firm that conducted the survey. <br><br>The survey data from the term tracker was recorded within excel sheets. Survey questions were selected by Anthony Piscitelli based on their relevance to the topic of ethical investing and geographic coverage of Canada. Each question selected by the project manager was allocated a survey ID number from survey ID#1 to survey ID#50. The excel sheets are labelled (except for the first page) using the survey ID# for the appropriate survey question. The first excel sheet contains a list of the fifty survey questions with their allocated survey ID#, the firm responsible for the data and the population surveyed for the data. The excel sheets following the first page include the survey question, the variables and their values, the year of the data’s publication, the sample size of the survey, and a link to the survey data. <br><br>The data recorded for each of the survey questions’ variables are in the form of percentages. The majority of the data was obtained in percentage form. For data sets that were not available in percentage form, the raw data was converted to a percentage.<br> <br>Onomo Ogbe and Jennifer Peers divided up entering the data. A quality control check was completed when all data was inputted to ensure accuracy by the person who did not enter the data.
description: Canadian Adults; Canadian Investors. Smallest Geographic Unit: Canada