CASCA has, in the past, sponsored demographics surveys of the astronomy community in Canada in order to understand how our community is evolving over time. This has historically been for our own interest, but various external stakeholders now request demographic information on the community as a matter of course. For example, the Canadian government has embraced an initiative called “Gender Based Analysis Plus (GBA+)” which strives to look past sex and gender diversity to other levels of diversity (e.g., language, race etc.). We can expect requests about demographics in the Canadian community to be made whenever we approach the government for funding for the foreseeable future. This fact provides motivation for CASCA as a society to understand its demographics as best we can and have the most up-to-date information at all times. Given the personal nature of the information requested, each CASCA member must provide or not provide it on their own behalf, and this private area of your profile has been deemed the most effective and efficient way to keep track of this information.
On this renewal form, we ask for information on birth year (age), gender, disability status, indigenous status, race, ethnicity and religion. You are free to “prefer not to say” to any or all of these categories, but please bear in mind that we cannot provide the information requested in funding proposals without your responses. This information will not be visible on the membership profiles. Each year you will have the opportunity to update this information at the time of your membership renewal. This information constitutes the "private" side of your CASCA profile and will not be visible on the membership or public profiles.
The information from the private side of profiles will always be presented in aggregate form to understand the fractional population of our society as a whole, taking care to never present it in a way that would render any individual identifiable. It is to be used only to understand our societal demographics and fulfill requests to external stakeholders, such as for Memoranda to Cabinet for facility funding, as described above. At no time will your name be displayed with the information from the private side of your profile for any reason.
The additional optional fields will become part of your member profile in the CASCA member directory. Your name, institute, field of study, and research area keywords will appear in the publicly accessible directory. This information, in addition to your photo, email address, career stage, and institution address (provided on the member renewal page) will appear in the member’s only directory, accessible only to logged in CASCA members. You can choose to hide your information from the directory using the checkbox on your personal profile page (https://casca.ca/wp-admin/profile.php).
Data on this form is encrypted by a Premium AlphaSSL Wildcard SSL Certificate. This SSL is issued by a Trusted CA. It has 256-bit Encryption along with Warranty, Digital Seal and 2048 bit root strength. Data will be stored on the CASCA web servers (hosted by GreenGeeks.ca), located in Toronto, Canada. Access to these data are limited to those with high-level administrative access to the website (CASCA president, CASCA administrator, and webmaster).
