New guidance on collecting and reporting data about sex and gender identity in official statistics

[Imicola]

I've not spotted another thread on this, but I've just been made aware that the Office for Statistics Regulation has finally produced new guidance on how producers of official statistics should collect and report data about sex.

I've not read it in full yet...what I have read makes clear arguments about the need to ensure clarity around the use of terms (it doesn't provide standard definitions, but includes the interpretation of terms that they use, which I think seem clear), that sex and gender shouldn't be used interchangeably and that Sex is a protected characteristic.

I'll have a more detailed look later, but the one concern I have is that while it talks about ensuring the right response options are available (e.g. it talks about gender identity options including non-binary or whatever), it doesn't include anything mention of ensuring response options are available to cover those who don't believe in gender ideology/don't have a gender identity. In my view, any data collection which fails to provide response options which accurately reflect this means that factually incorrect data will be collected about some individuals, and this would be in contravention of the GPDR principle of accuracy (and will also undermine the quality of the resulting data).

There is an email address for feedback, so once I've read it all I'll send some in.

Collecting and reporting data about sex and gender identity in official statistics: A guide for official statistics producers – Office for Statistics Regulation (statisticsauthority.gov.uk)

I also agree with Dadjoke for possibly the first time in my life that trans identity should be recorded as well as sex for both victims and perpetrators. It's important to be able to monitor and track patterns.

Me too.
It should be the same as the question about religion, with an option to select 'none'.

One of the issues is that it’s incredibly hard to collect this data without offending either gender critical people or transgender people. That’s the nut to track.

In UK prisons, there are a disproportionate number of gay and bisexual non-transgender women, but the data in that is not properly recorded. I don’t think for a moment that is something inherent about being non-heterosexual. Is it because of other factors- more likely to be charged, more likely to be given a prison sentence? Poverty-related crimes? Without proper data, we just don’t know.

Where are you going with the sexuality thing? I agree, the more data, the merrier, but we can't let the state get too intrusive. Sometimes you've got to leave it to individual researchers working with willing survey respondents.

One of the issues is that it’s incredibly hard to collect this data without offending either gender critical people or transgender people. That’s the nut to track.

Go on@DadJoke what question would you suggest? Why is 'are you transgender?' offensive to anybody?

One of the issues is that it’s incredibly hard to collect this data without offending either gender critical people or transgender people.

As long as sex isn't left out in favour of gender identity, I think the most a "gender identity" question would illicit from the majority of GC people is a bit of an eye-roll, and ticking of "prefer not to say" or leaving it blank.

Having "gender" offends gender critical people. Having "sex" offends transgender people, or they will answer with their gender identity. The two terms have a context senstive meaning, except for gender critical people.

For medical purposes asking sex assigned at birth is necessary, but that phrase offends gender critical people.

Most people simply don't mind, and they also need to be catered for without using phrases they don't understand. This is the best I can do:

Gender / Sex

Are you :
A woman
A man
Other

Are you transgender?
Yes
No
Other

Please don't use this as an opportunity to attack definitions you don't agree with. If you have a better idea, I am all ears.

The NHS records gender identity, which is to "tell providers they would like their gender to be recorded and referred to by the service. " So if a trans man turns up at a gyno clincal, they can refer to him as a man, and use the gendered pronouns and title he prefers. They'd also know to refer to a GNC woman in the same clinic correctly.

It then records "Gender identity same as birth indicator" - indicating whether a doctor recorded male or female on their birth certificate and whether that matched gender identity. This means the NHS knows that the trans man above should be offered a cervical smear.

I suspect gender critical people have a problem with this way of collecting data.

I think a better idea would be for organisations like the NHS, which is after all grounded in science, to lead by example and have 'Sex: male or female' and 'Gender: man/woman/non-binary/whatever else/none'.

No one has a right not to feel offended. If it offends a gender-critical person to see that term on a form at all, well, tough (although I suspect that, as Witchy says, it would largely provoke no more than a bit of an eye-roll). If it offends a man saying he's a woman to see the two terms split and used correctly, again, tough.

What is your sex as observed at birth?

Do you have a gender identity?
Yes - woman
Yes - man
Yes - other, option to specify
No

That would do it, I’d have thought.

I think this is fine, if a little convoluted. It makes it clear that gender identity, in this context, is about how you want to be addressed and so forth. It gets the job done.

Yes observed at birth is better than assigned (unless the person has a DSD). I mean assigned doesn't offend me, it's just not the right word.

Will this have any impact on how crimes and criminals are recorded by the police?
I'm thinking of the latest outrage when the trans murderer Scarlett Blake and his crime was recorded as being committed by a woman.
This is so serious as to warrant not just guidance but mandated instructions, to prevent official data from becoming increasingly unreliable in this regard.

We've already had the BBC reporting on an apparent surge in 'women' sex offenders.

Why bother to ask if people are transgender if you don't also unambiguously identify either their actual sex or their 'gender identity' (obviously I would prefer sex because everyone's got one. And if they say non-binary or cat gender you're none the wiser as to their sex even if they say they're transgender)?

Your data would be meaningless.

And surely people are either transgender or not. No third option.

This is the best I can do:

Gender / Sex
Are you :
A woman
A man
Other

Are you transgender?
Yes
No
Other

Useless.

If someone ticks the top option on both of those, are they: a transman who has answered Q 1 as sex; or a transwoman who has answered it as gender? [Edit - the 'other' in Q 1 makes people more likely to interpret it as gender.]

The NHS digital systems were very carefully set up with both sex and gender fields, and extensive explanatory notes setting out the clinical dangers of recording these incorrectly or asking the question in a way that could be misinterpreted.

A bunch of subject access requests a little while ago found that the sex field is habitually left blank and the gender one often filled in by a clinician who hasn't asked.

'A bunch of subject access requests a little while ago found that the sex field is habitually left blank and the gender one often filled in by a clinician who hasn't asked.'
No surprise there.

Having scanned the guidance it goes a long way in terms of being clear about what is good data collection. They use sex recorded at birth, and distinguish it from legal sex. They also state not everyone has a gender identity. I wonder if Professor Alice Sullivan has had input to this as I think she was part of a review team.

This is the best I can do:

Gender / Sex
Are you :
A woman
A man
Other

Are you transgender?
Yes
No
Other

This is the opposite of what the guidance is saying. The guidance would result in something like:

Sex recorded at birth (as recorded on original birth certificate)

• Male
• Female

Legal Sex (as recorded on current birth certificate which may have been changed by a GRC)

• Male
• Female

Do you have a Gender Identity ( add in definition)

• Yes go to Q ?
• No go to Q ?

What is your gender identity (add definition)

• Transwoman
• Transman
• Non-binary
• Woman
• Man
• Cis-Woman
• Cis-Man
• I don’t have a gender identity (Only if you direct everyone to this question.)
• Other
• Free text box to define other.

Having "gender" offends gender critical people. Having "sex" offends transgender people

One of these objections is based in reality, and one is not. I don't have a "gender". Everyone who has ever lived has a sex, however ambiguous.

Yes that's perfect. No offence needed. If people can be shown to have lied then depending on the context similar sanctions should be applied to lying about anything else.

I can only speak re the NHS Trust I work in, but the IT system wasn't so much carefully set up as bought job lot from the US. The demographic tab has the option of 'legal sex' and 'sex assigned at birth'. I agreed these seem to be filled in at random and by someone who didn't ask the patient. The sexual orientation field is also left blank or wrong to my knowledge too. Plus I have known patients without a GRC be able to change their 'legal sex', and those patients will I assume now miss out or be wrongly invited for smear/prostate exams. It's a mess.

the IT system wasn't so much carefully set up as bought job lot from the US

That's the other problem, of course. Years of work designing a robust standard system, but every trust left to make their own choice of what to actually use (and I suspect many being pushed to get one up and running before the NHS design was complete).

Sex shouldn’t be offensive and has only been made so by the same kind of pressure under which people in the Victorian era swooned or were titillated upon seeing an ankle. It’s nonsense.

Only a few years back, those who had a severe hang-up, to the point where they were considered candidates for so called “medical sex change” we’re carefully counselled to ensure they fully understood the fact that they were the sex they were, and that any operation was cosmetic and to alleviate the distress they felt because of their sexed body.

Abandoning that common sense approach, where those distressed by reality were helped to accept it and acknowledge the limitations of treatment, for an approach that requires the entire population to lie in order to validate a false idea, is exactly where the problems began.

You can’t force the world to lie and any treatment that requires that is doomed to failure.

Sex should be requested, using the wording most likely to elicit the highest rate of truthful responses, while still maintaining reality in the description (ie assigned at birth doesn’t represent reality, whereas observed at is generally correct).

If “gender identity” is to be mentioned at all, it needs to be clear it’s a belief system. “Do you consider you have a separate gender identity from your sex” might work, but equally might be too confusing. “Do you consider yourself to be transgender” might be clearer. Either way, it can’t say “are you transgender” or “do you have a gender identity” as both those things are currently faith based descriptors.

Or it might be best simply to ask about gender reassignment, seeing as that has been reified in law, despite its abstraction, caused by the ludicrous suggestion that you can claim that you are covered, even though you haven’t done a thing to start the process.

None of these suggestions deal with the issue that even the census recognised from the last one, is that the word gender does not have consistent meaning.

ie the questions the asked last time
Sex (compulsary)
Gender (optional)
were thought by many to be the same thing.

Because of what has happened thanks to the undue influence of a tiny minority, the census will have to spell out what it means.

ie Sex - biological fact at birth
ie Gender - impossible to define because everyday some money hungry group like stonewall is expanding what it means, or tiktok has spread nonsense etc..

NB neither of these question have anything to do with someone's sexuality, so if there is a question about sexuality it is not part of this section. Although of course anyone claiming to be same SEX attracted but has claimed a gender could be said to be replying fraudulently to the census, if they are basing their response on their gender.

Sorry meant to add, as someone up thread suggested, a more legitimate question would be one based on protected characteristics ie (to paraphrase) has a GRC or is in the process of applying for one.