Improving ethnicity data standards

#InclusiveBritain

by Richard Laux, Chief Statistician of the Cabinet Office

This week the Cabinet Office’s Equality Hub published its Standards for Ethnicity Data. This follows the consultation on a draft set of standards last summer. The Equality Hub has also published an analysis of the consultation responses.

We committed to do this in response to action 6 of the Inclusive Britain report — the government’s comprehensive response to the Commission on Race and Ethnic Disparities (2020–21):

“To ensure more responsible and accurate reporting on race and ethnicity, the RDU will by the end of 2022 consult on new standards for government departments and other public bodies on how to record, understand and communicate ethnicity data”.

The standards meet this action by describing best practice for the collection, analysis and reporting of ethnicity data. They apply to people in government departments or public bodies who are working with ethnicity data.

Five aspects of these standards are noteworthy.

1. They are topic-specific data standards

First, as far as I am aware, they are the only comprehensive set of data standards that apply to a specific topic — in this instance, ethnicity. Other standards, such as the Government Functional Standard, or the Code of Practice for Statistics, are applicable to data more widely.

This reflects the sensitivity and importance of the topic of ethnicity. The Commission on Race and Ethnic Disparities considered data about people’s ethnicity. They identified 3 aspects of ethnicity data collection and analysis:

• the granularity of data collection
• the need to adjust data to reflect, for example, different ethnic groups’ age profiles
• the choice of appropriate benchmarks for comparing groups.

The Commission recommended that the government should:

“Develop and publish a set of ethnicity data standards to improve understanding and information gathering, reducing the opportunity for misunderstanding and misuse.”

It also recommended that the standards should apply across all media and public communications channels.

Inclusive Britain accepted this recommendation and made the commitment in action 6.

2. They reflect the Code of Practice for Statistics

The standards reflect the three pillars of the Code of Practice for Statistics:

• Trustworthiness — a product of the people, systems and processes within organisations that enable and support the production of statistics and data.
• Quality — statistics fit their intended uses, are based on appropriate data and methods, and are not materially misleading.
• Value — statistics and data are useful, easy to access, remain relevant, and support understanding of important issues.

We have done this to align with the Code, the definitive set of high level standards for UK statistics. We would encourage people to read our standards alongside the Code.

3. They also relate to stages of research

We have outlined the standards (within the 3 pillars) as they relate to each of:

• data collection
• analysis
• reporting

We have annexed a summary of the standards that relate to each of these 3 stages of research.

Some of the key aspects of ethnicity data covered by the standards include:

• using GSS harmonised categories for reporting on ethnicity data
• asking people to self-report their ethnicity
• designing data collections to increase response rates for, and representativeness of, different ethnic groups
• understanding and accounting for people who did not provide their ethnicity
• analysing and reporting on differences between ethnic groups that have been adjusted to take into account other socio-economic and demographic factors
• reporting measures of reliability for ethnicity data
• enhancing ethnicity statistics to meet new or evolving user needs

4. The standards apply to government departments and public bodies

They give guidance on how to improve the quality of collection, analysis and reporting of ethnicity data. This can help government departments and other organisations to properly understand ethnic disparities and their causes, and to develop policies that reduce any unjustified disparities between ethnic groups.

We also encourage organisations commissioned by public bodies to use the standards. We would also welcome voluntary adoption of the standards by the media.

5. Understanding the use and impact

We asked for views in our consultation on understanding the use and impact of the standards. To do this, we proposed working with the Office for Statistics Regulation (OSR). Most respondents agreed with the proposal.

As a result, OSR will:

• reflect the standards in a planned 5-year stocktake of the Code of Practice
• develop guidance for reviewing data producer compliance with the standards — when OSR carry out assessment of statistics
• review different data producers and statistics in one or two years’ time — to see how producers are responding to the standards.

What next? The Equality Hub will track the use of the standards and reactions to them. This is with a view to a formal review in a year’s time. At that point we will decide whether to extend the standards to other population groups.