Ethnicity

Please note that this is a general guide when recording ethnicity for NHI and national collections reporting – individual collections may define specific rules which may be less robust than the descriptions below.

Reporting ethnicity to the national collections

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’ maps to null ethnicity. ‘Not specified’ should be used when the respondent provides fewer than three responses to the ethnicity question.
• ‘Not stated’ means that the respondent did not want to have their ethnicity recorded or the respondent was not in a position to report their ethnicity (eg unconscious).

Some 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

Some common 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	21	Entry in Ethnicity_3 not required, it is the same as the code in Ethnicity_1
2 codes	54	99		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		Ethnicity_1 should be populated first
1 code	Null			Ethnicity_1 is mandatory. Use ‘not stated’ (code 99) if no ethnicity is reported