to think my age and ethnicity is not relevant

[Therevchasesducks]

I live in HA house, just had a call about a repair that was done a while back, they asked me the normal stuff, then at the end of the survey they asked my age, and ethnicity, I said it wasnt relevant.
so aibu in thinking it is relevant?

Edam it was particularly interesting re RNLI because they do in fact rescue a small number of ethnic minorities (who don't tend to be yachtsmen but do tend to be crewmen on commercial ships that are crewed by people from all over the world). If RNLI had been prepared to monitor it they would probably have come out ok, but they (quite rightly) said that it was utterly against their principles because their job was to rescue anyone in trouble on the sea whoever they were.

My friend is in an amateur gay choir, and he says they get booked for everything because they tick the diversity box, so they very often end up appearing next to proper professional outfits.

Quite, Kathy. Same for mountain rescue.

Someguy, how did you know how to describe me so accurately?

Actually, I never have a vegetarian box to tick. S'not fair.

I have a feeling this started as a good thing but has morphed into a pointless exercise in many cases.

It is important to monitor who is using a particular service but not everything. I think it should only be used when absolutly relevant.

It should be used by services to check against local populations to see if they are not reaching certain groups. Remember that can include white people, men, the more affluent. It doesnt just have to be used to target minorities.

I was working with community groups in the early 90s. It all got a bit silly when people started adding to the list. Gender, ethnicity, religion, disability, sexual preference, HIV status, employment status, level of education etc etc. All these could be relevant in some cases but all of them, all the time? Just to attend an evening class?

My pet hate was the 'other' box on the ethnicity forms. Bloody insulting. Thankfully these seem to have disappeared. I refused to describe my children and 'other'!

In the perfect world, they might use the info of age/ethnicity of tenants getting repairs to compare with the age/ethnicity of tenants overall to identify if e.g. very elderly tenants get more repairs done because they're less able to DIY (or conversely ask for fewer because they don't want to bother anybody), or to identify if there's any discrimination. But in this world I expect it's a box-ticking exercise, filed and forgotten.

This 'demographic' information is not stored in the same place as your personal data and is not linked to it. As others have pointed out above, it is used to monitor whether the service is reaching all sections of the community or whether uptake is disproportionately high or low amongst certain groups.

Also, when these questions are asked at the end of a questionnaire, the information is used to check that the respondents are a representative sample of the wider population - and thus ensuring that the results are representative.