I posted a query about the coding of ethnicity in official statistics,
which arose from a (non-medical) colleague's feeling that many children
were of sufficiently mixed race for the conventional categories of white
black asian chinese etc to be quite inadequate.
Many thanks to Larry MacNabb, Greg Phillpotts, Mike Barker, Sue Chinn, R.
Allan Reese, John Sherington, Heather Dickinson and Jay Warner for their
responses.
It turns out that the query is very topical. The Department of Health
updated only last month its position statement at
http://www.doh.gov.uk/ethdevlist3.htm confirming its intention to use the
planned 2001 Census ethnic codes in all its future data collections. This
is a list of 16 distinct ethnic codes, and is a clear indication that the
previous coding was felt to be too restrictive.
Interestingly some respondents found the query to be politically incorrect,
which emphasises the political sensitivity of working with ethnicity
statistics.
The only frustration for my colleague is that he will have to wait until
Census 2001 to get the answer to his question - "what proportion of mixed
race children fall outside the conventional categories?"
Tim Cole
[log in to unmask] Phone +44(0)20 7905 2666 Fax +44(0)20 7242 2723
Paed Epidemiology & Biostats, Institute of Child Health, London WC1N 1EH, UK
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