Proposed ethnic group question

Proposals for the 2011 Census were published in the White Paper ‘Helping to shape tomorrow’ in December 2008. These proposals include updated response categories to the question about ethnic group or background. In addition, new questions are proposed which will collect information about national identity and language. This suite of questions will provide a rich picture of the diversity of the population in England and Wales and will allow local and national services to be planned and monitored effectively.

The proposed questions were drawn up following a thorough three year process of consultation with a wide variety of census data users. A formal consulation process and equality impact assessment were carried out on the national identity, language and religion questions.

Given the space constraints on the questionnaire, it is not possible for ONS to provide tick box response categories for all of the groups who have requested this in response to the question about ethnic group. However anyone who feels that they are not covered by a tick box response has the opportunity to write in a response. ONS will then process this information and can provide anaysis of these written-in responses.

The equality impact assessment of the ethnic group question recommended that ONS should agree a policy to prioritise which ethnic groups should be provided with a tick box category in response to the question about ethnic group or background.

This prioritisation tool was developed in collaboration with the Welsh Assembly Government, the Scottish Government, The General Register Office for Scotland, Northern Ireland Statistics and Research Agency and the Commisssion for Racial Equality. Four themes are used to assess and prioritise potential tick boxes. These criteria are

• Strength of need for information on that group

• Lack of alternative sources of information

• Clarity and quality of the information collected and acceptability to respondents

• Comparability with 2001 data.

A detailed information paper covering the ethnic group prioritisation and decision making process is linked above.

ONS continues to liaise with representatives of groups that are not covered within the tick box response categories to encourage members of the group they represent to make full use of the write-in response boxes to ensure that their community is accurately measured.