Scotland's New Ethnicity Classification for Scottish Official Statistics and Recommended for Scotland's 2011 Census

2. The Decision-Making Process

Who made the decisions?

2.1 Following the REAF recommendation, the then Communities Minister promised to review Scotland's official ethnicity classification and the SG was tasked with leading the review.

2.2 The review team consisted of government statisticians, researchers and policy officials ⁵ and non-governmental members from the Information Services Division of NHSScotland and, for a time, the former Commission for Racial Equality ( CRE). Team members were selected because they had expertise in the topic area and/or statistics or research.

2.3 The review team contributed to decisions about all the ethnicity classifications being developed for the UK censuses through membership of several UK groups, led by the Office for National Statistics ( ONS) ⁶. Some of these groups focus on the technical aspects of running a census such as questionnaire design and data processing and other groups focus on the topics and questions themselves. They help to ensure that census questions are joined-up across the UK (a process called ' UK harmonisation'), where necessary to enable statistics to be produced for GB and the UK.

2.4 Representatives of the review team and the other UK census offices ⁷ met in February 2008 to agree, finally, which parts of the UK classifications needed to be UK harmonised and which needed to be different in order to meet the specific circumstance of each UK country. Shortly after that, the three UK Registrars General met to agree these recommendations.

2.5 In May 2008, the new classification and the need to ask an accompanying national identity question in the census, was endorsed by Scottish Ministers.

What about future decisions?

2.6 When the new classification and national identity question start to be used for Scottish Official Statistics from Autumn 2008 onwards, SG and GROS will start to publicise and promote their up-take by public authorities and other organisations who wish to collect ethnicity statistics. It will be for each body to decide whether and when to use the new classification and the national identity question. However, it is recommended that organisations wait until the national identity question is finalised in Autumn 2008.

2.7 Towards the end of the year, GROS will publish a policy statement on the next census (including topics and question content) and this will be made available to the Scottish Parliament for consideration. It will include the new classification and national identity question. In Spring 2009, GROS will conduct Scotland's census rehearsal ⁸ with approximately 50,000 Scottish households and this will include the new classification and national identity question. The rehearsal is not used to test or develop census questions but to test the logistics and process of running the census. Question testing was undertaken in the census test ⁹ in April 2006.

2.8 The Scottish Parliament will take the final decision on the content of the census in early 2010. GROS will conduct the next census on 27 March 2011. In the run up to the census, GROS and SG will continue to work with communities to explain and promote the census and to explain what it is used for and the importance of its completion.

Developing ethnicity classifications across the UK

2.9 A population census is taken every 10 years in the UK; the last was in 2001 and the next will be in 2011. There are three UK Censuses (each including an ethnicity classification) for Scotland, England & Wales and Northern Ireland. Respectively they are the responsibility of GROS, the Office for National Statistics ( ONS) in partnership with the Welsh Assembly Government ( WAG) and the Northern Ireland Statistics and Research Agency ( NISRA) - collectively termed the UK census offices.

2.10 Each UK census office is reviewing its ethnicity classification. In the last UK censuses, the classifications were similar but not identical ¹⁰. In developing their classifications, the aims of ONS, WAG and NISRA are broadly similar to those of SG and GROS. A core principle of UK censuses is that topics, questions and data outputted should be the same or similar ('harmonised'), where needed, to enable statistics to be produced for GB and the UK¹¹. This is a requirement of some data users. SG and GROS have worked closely with the other UK census offices to decide which aspects of the UK classifications need to be harmonised and which aspects can be developed independently to meet the individual circumstances of each UK country.

2.11 Scotland's classification has been finalised before those for England & Wales and Northern Ireland. This is because SG and GROS must now prepare to include the classification in Scotland's census rehearsal ¹² in Spring 2009, whereas the rehearsal for England & Wales and Northern Ireland is not until Autumn 2009. This gives ONS, WAG and NISRA slightly longer to test and fine-tune their classifications. Provisionally, they will finalise their classifications and make them publicly available towards the end of the year. Given this, it is not possible to provide details of the other UK classifications in this report.

2.12 It is however already clear that ONS (and WAG) are also likely to adopt a national identity question followed by an ethnic group question for the England & Wales census. GROS and SG will continue to work in partnership with ONS (and WAG) to develop the national identity question. Provisionally ONS will finalise their national identity question towards the end of the year.

2.13 It has been agreed that all UK classifications (and the ethnic group questions specifically) will be comparable at a broad category level ('White', 'Asian' etc) to allow statistics to be produced for GB and the UK. Specific tick boxes, however, will differ in some places to reflect the individual circumstances of each UK country. For example, each UK country has a different ethnic profile and some the findings from consultation and research have varied across the UK.

If I use the new classification and national identity question, will there be any guidance available?

2.14 In Autumn 2008, before the new classification and national identity question is brought into use, the SG will publish a guide for the collection and classification of ethnicity data using the new classification and national identity question. This will then appear on the SG web-site alongside this report. It will provide practical advice for data users and others who want to use the new questions to collect ethnicity statistics. It will explain what data users will need to consider if they want to compare ethnicity data derived from the new and old classification, as this is a primary concern for many data users. Annex E sets out, in brief, what level of comparability will be possible and how classifications should be compared. It will also provide some advice on coding raw data before it can be outputted as statistics and what the outputted statistics might look like. Links to other useful information on ethnicity are provided at Annex D.