How to Ask About Race/Ethnicity: A Guide to More Inclusive Diversity Data Collection

Dear Peoplism,

We've been in the process of revamping our diversity data collection. Our goals for diversity data collection are:

• To have a more accurate and complete data set as we track progress on our DEIB goals.
• To produce clean data that can be used for EEO-1 reporting.
• To be inclusive.

We plan to ask all employees and applicants to fill out demographic information via a survey. But we’re currently struggling with how to ask about race/ethnicity in a way that meets all of these goals. Since we have to fill out the EEO-1 report anyway, we figured we would use those same categories.

Our current draft for the race/ethnicity part of the survey reads:

• What is your race/ethnicity? (U.S.)
  • Picklist (respondents can select one option):
    • American Indian or Alaska Native (Not Hispanic or Latino)
    • Asian (Not Hispanic or Latino)
    • Black or African American (Not Hispanic or Latino)
    • Hispanic or Latino
    • Native Hawaiian or Other Pacific Islander (Not Hispanic or Latino)
    • Two or More Races (Not Hispanic or Latino)
    • White (Not Hispanic or Latino)
    • I do not wish to answer

Is the way we ask about race/ethnicity the right approach? Are these the right categories? We don’t want to blow this!

Sincerely,
EEOverwhelmed

Dear EEOverwhelmed,

We all know that we can’t improve what we don’t measure. But collecting demographic data is hard. People’s identities are complex and deeply personal. So a lot of HR departments punt on collecting diversity data in a rigorous way. Kudos to you and your team for stepping into the arena and committing to doing something important, even though it’s challenging.

As currently written, however, the race/ethnicity question doesn’t help you meet your three goals. The primary issue is that by using EEO-1 race/ethnicity categories and only allowing people to select one answer, the options are not inclusive.

For example, if someone is of two or more races/ethnicities and one of those is Hispanic or Latino, Latina or Latine, then they don’t have an appropriate category to select that accurately represents them. The wording here sends the inappropriate message that someone can’t be both Hispanic or Latino, Latina, or Latine and identify as another race/ethnicity as well.

We recognize that EEO-1 reporting is extremely inflexible and forces companies to categorize employees as either Hispanic, Latino, or Latine (of any race) or as identifying as one of five racial categories. This issue stems from how race and ethnicity are categorized by the U.S. Census. For a good overview of the difference between race and ethnicity see here. In short, this practice has not kept up with how many individuals would like to self-identify.

The current categories also do not give people of two or more races/ethnicities the opportunity to identify what their race/ethnicities are.

And, finally, given your size (over 500 people), there is an opportunity to be more inclusive and precise when it comes to Asian individuals.

We recommend using the following race/ethnicity question instead:

What is your race/ethnicity?
"Please select all that apply":

• American Indian, Alaska Native or Indigenous
• "East Asian"
• "South Asian"
• "Southeast Asian"
• Black or African American
• Hispanic or "Latino, Latina or Latine"
• Native Hawaiian or Other Pacific Islander
• White
• "Prefer to self-describe ________"

Below is an explanation of the changes we recommend.

Please select all that apply
The most important change is allowing people to select all the race/ethnicities that apply to them. Yes, this puts more work on your team in aggregating information, specifically for the “Two or More Races” category. But it’s crucial to making this process more inclusive.

Using the categories we recommend, any employee that selects more than one race/ethnicity could be combined into “Two or More Races” for the EEO-1 report and for internal reporting. Individuals that select both "Hispanic or Latino, Latina or Latine" and another race/ethnicity could be reported as "Hispanic/Latino" in the EEO-1 report, but more accurately as "Two or More Races" internally. For internal purposes, individuals could also be kept in all groups that they selected. Representation percentages simply would add up to more than 100%. This is the approach Google now takes, for example.

Indigenous
We recommend adding “Indigenous” to the “American Indian or Alaska Native” option because it is a more inclusive term.

Disaggregating Asian
Since your company has enough employees (more than 500), we recommend disaggregating the Asian category to allow individuals to specify if they are East Asian, South Asian, or Southeast Asian. There is a lot of evidence that experiences, both in society and the workplace, are quite different for Asian Americans from these different communities. Breaking this data out into multiple categories would allow you to examine what differences may exist and better tailor your DEIB efforts.

Latine
We encourage adding Latina and the gender-neutral Latine options to “Hispanic or Latino” to be more inclusive.

Prefer to self describe
We recommend removing the option of “I do not wish to answer” and replacing it with “Prefer to self-describe.” Currently, there is no option for someone who does not fit into the listed racial/ethnic categories. It’s important to give those individuals an opportunity to self-identify. Also, in our experience, making a question optional but removing the “I do not wish to answer” option actually reduces the amount of missing data.

Phew! While the changes above do add some work in terms of aggregating data for reporting, we believe this effort will be well worth it. The new format is more inclusive and it still allows you to have just one survey question on race/ethnicity for EEO-1 reporting and tracking internal DEIB efforts.

That said, there is no perfect way to collect data, especially when you’re categorizing something as sensitive and important as someone’s racial or ethnic identity. Communicating about why this diversity data is so important to your company and being open to learning more will go a long way toward establishing trust from employees and applicants.

Good luck!
The Peoplism Team