Ethnicity reporting

Best practice for providing ethnicity data to the national collections. This is a general guide when recording ethnicity for National Health Index (NHI) and national collections reporting.

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Reporting ethnicity

Field Rules
Ethnicity_1
  • Mandatory — must be populated
  • Can be ‘Not stated’ (code 99) if ethnicity_2 and ethnicity_3 are both null
Ethnicity_2
  • Optional
  • Can only be populated if Ethnicity_1 is populated
  • Cannot be the same value as Ethnicity_1
  • Cannot be populated with ‘not stated (code 99)’
Ethnicity_3
  • Optional
  • Can only be populated if Ethnicity_2 is populated
  • Cannot be the same value as Ethnicity_2 or Ethnicity_1
  • Cannot be populated with 'not stated (code 99)'

Guidelines

Not specified

'Not specified' maps to null ethnicity. ‘Not specified’ should be used when the respondent provides fewer than 3 responses to the ethnicity question.

Not stated

'Not stated' means the respondent either:

  • did not want to have their ethnicity recorded
  • was not in a position to report their ethnicity, unconscious for example.

Valid combinations

Number of ethnicity codes reported Ethnicity_1 Ethnicity_2 Ethnicity_3
3 valid codes 11 21 30
2 valid codes 11 21 Null
1 valid code 11 Null Null
1 valid code 99 Null Null

Invalid combinations

Number of ethnicity codes reported Ethnicity_1 Ethnicity_2 Ethnicity_3 Comment
3 codes 99 21 10 Cannot have 99 as ethnicity_1 when there are valid codes in ethnicity_2 or ethnicity_3
3 codes 21 11 11 Entry in Ethnicity_3 not required, it is the same as the code in Ethnicity_2
3 codes 21 11 11 Entry in Ethnicity_3 not required, it is the same as the code in Ethnicity_1
2 codes 54 99  n/a Cannot have 99 as an ethnicity_2. Report null in this field
2 codes 21 11 99 Cannot have 99 as an ethnicity_3. Report null in this field
2 codes Null 21 10 Ethnicity_1 should be populated first, then Ethnicity_2
2 codes 21 Null 11 Ethnicity_2 should be populated, not Ethnicity_3
1 code Null 21  n/a Ethnicity_1 should be populated first
1 code Null  n/a  n/a Ethnicity_1 is mandatory. Use ‘not stated (code 99)' if no ethnicity is reported

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