Census ‘hugely overstated’ trans population - Telegraph article

Funnily enough, it's hard to convince people that you are collecting serious and necessary data if you are so fucking coy and blasé about accurately reporting sex, which is after all pretty fundamental to most people's lives.

The leading and confusing question wording leading to overcounting was exactly what FWR posters predicted would happen. It’s now ruined a crucial national dataset. It serves nobody to obscure the full picture, whatever gender identity they have or don’t have. We all rely on there being accurate statistics about the population. Public service spending follows those statistics.

“The Office for National Statistics has corrected the census after it mistakenly inflated Britain’s “pansexual” population by more than half.
The latest census in 2021 had claimed that 112,000 people in Britain identified as “pansexual”, where one is attracted to people of all genders.
But this was incorrect and it has since been changed to 48,000 people.”

The figure they included (112,000) was over twice as high as the correct figure.

They inflated the figure by a lot more than half.

There's no end to the potential for once respected organisations to look like incompetent idiots when they've signed up to Stonewall and their gender woowoo beliefs.

Another census fuckup comes to light.

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2023/11/03/ons-corrects-census-pansexual-population-figure-inflated/

https://archive.ph/5YS9L archive link

Why were they even asking about pansexuals? What earthly reason...

Exactly.

@KnickerlessParsons I can't remember what answer I gave for sure either. The mad thing is, from a GC POV, you could make a case for answering 'yes' or 'no' to that question. Where what was needed was, loosely. "Do you believe in all this gender bollocks? If No, carry onto the next section. If Yes, see below..."

Wonder how the question was worded.

It could also confuse those people who know that sex and gender are different things and only a transphobe would claim 'female' and 'woman' (for example) "match" in any way...

The inquiry into the findings was sparked after academics warned the wording of the census question, “is the gender you identify with the same as your sex registered at birth?” may have skewed the answers for respondents whose first language is not English, or who are less familiar with the language of gender identity.

It may also have confused people like me who know what their sex is but who consider gender a load of made up bollocks. I have no idea what my gender is.
I can't remember what I answered, but it could well have been "no".

So the article doesn't seem to suggest anything new had happened.

So is the Times just trying to keep the issue alive.

(I was able to read it via https://archive.ph

The Times has dropped another article

https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/census-trans-question-under-scrutiny-for-confusion-w07c05hpl

It has been archived. The ONS seems very complacent.

I wonder how and when things changed at the ESRC?

I must admit I didn't really know much about them until (of course) some of those threads on FWR pointing out such overt slanting of survey questions.

And once you see it you can unsee it.

Crikey! It's always worse than you think! I wonder how and when things changed at the ESRC? I imagine very early on as they would be funding "Gender Studies" and other identity politics research mills?

If the funding is from ESRC I would question the outcomes. They are the main funders of gender ideology research. They aren't interested in facts.

See https://www.mumsnet.com/search/advanced?allTopics=false&query=ESRC&topics[0]=Feminism%3A+Sex+%26+gender+discussions

This really makes me annoyed. We all told them, here and on twitter, that the ridiculous woke style questions would lead to mass confusion and unusable data. And now it has, it's our tax money needed to find a big project to untangle it and sort it out. Infuriating.

What was the nonsense again between the 2 gender and sex questions that you had to answer in a really careful and considered way to say that you were a woman, had always been a female and were perfectly happy with the above? I bet that pair caused chaos.and made lots of women look trans.

I wonder if any of this money will go towards untangling the census sex/gender mess?

UK census 2021/2 data opportunity: invite-only full stage

Total fund: £2,400,000
Award range: £150,000 - £500,000
Opening date: 13 September 2023
Closing date: 7 November 2023 4:00pm UK time

Invite-only opportunity, offering funding for tools, services and activities that enable researchers to find, use and analyse data from the 2021 and 2022 UK censuses for social science-led research.

You must be based at a UK research organisation eligible for Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) funding.

The full economic cost of your project can be up to £500,000. ESRC will fund 80% of the full economic cost.

This opportunity uses a two-stage approach. We are now at stage two: invited full proposals. See ‘How to apply’ for details.

Funding is available until March 2026.

This is an invite-only funding opportunity. For previously published information about eligibility, see the listing of the outline stage opportunity (PDF, 248KB).

Analysis of census data will not be funded unless this work is solely focused on finding practical solutions to challenges in processing census data so that it can be used for research.

Loads more info:

does https://web.archive.org/ block in the same way?

I don't know what happened with those links but this separates them so they both should work:

The trans debate is too important for the census to be wrong
Any skewing of figures from the Office of National Statistics, accidental or not, will only make a controversial topic more divisive

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/columnists/2023/09/25/trans-rights-accuracy-census-office-of-national-statistics/

archived: https://archive.ph/H3ThD

Good grief! More examples of absurd questions in the article!

English is my first language, yet when I was about to donate blood last week I was confused by an online questionnaire I found asking whether I was “a person who menstruates”. My 82-year-old father-in-law is confused by the way his local hospital repeatedly refers to him as “they.” So when academics looking into these statistics found that those who speak English poorly were five times more likely to be transgender, shouldn’t the natural response by anyone seeking accuracy have been to question those figures?

Is the Blood Transfusion Service recording post-menopausal women as men??

I eventually had to change it quite a bit so it was more general but still have all the research and am thinking of doing something with it some day.

Please do! I'm intrigued by the summary that you've given.

Thanks for the Telegraph link. But I found it only worked with the first bit ie just copy and paste up to but not including /againetc,etc.

And yes, FWR should be the first port of call for journalists, including the Guardian!

Unfortunately like so much else the smear of being Karens, Terfs, right wing neonazi, means many will not allow their computer to be tainted by entering the link!

Have just had a brainwave. A bit like the Glinner weekly round up, we should have a weekly round up of more imformative threads - and I suppose the lets show we have a sense of humour nomination for best cake thread.

Same. (But then I remembers why 🙄)

Like we all said at the time. Ridiculous questions on sex and gender produced garbage cencus data. No surprise at all what also doesnt surprise me is learning about the proclivities of the person who oversaw it, explains a lot.

Interesting article in the Telegraph (archive link)

https://archive.ph/H3ThD/again?url=www.telegraph.co.uk/columnists/2023/09/25/trans-rights-accuracy-census-office-of-national-statistics/

Pulls a few threads together.

It was a voluntary question. We skipped it for our whole family.