The Office for Statistics Regulation (OSR) is currently working on a number of topics regarding data about sex and gender identity.
Guidance on data and statistics about sex and gender identity
We published an update to our Guidance on collecting and reporting data about sex and gender identity in official statistics on 17 December 2024. This update includes links to new GSS guidance on the topics of sex and gender identity which were published on the 11 December 2024.
The OSR guidance provides producers of official statistics a set of tools, based on the standards of the Code of Practice for Statistics, to help them think through how they collect and report data about sex and gender identity.
The guidance supersedes the OSR previous draft guidance on collecting and reporting data about sex in official statistics, published in 2021.
The key message of this guidance is that official statistics producers should have a strong understanding of their own data collections and how these meet the needs of their users, that producers should be clear about what information they are collecting and why, and explain this information as straightforwardly as possible both to respondents and data users.
To develop this guidance, we engaged with official statistics producers across the UK and a range of external stakeholders. This feedback, coupled with the insights from our regulatory work, helped to shape the guidance to ensure it supports the collection, use and communication of statistics in this area. We would like to thank all of those who shared their views with us.
We recognise that this is an evolving area, and we will keep this guidance, including the case studies, under review and update when appropriate. We welcome feedback on this guidance from statistics producers and others at any time – please email regulation@statistics.gov.uk.
Review of Gender Identity in the 2021 England and Wales Census
Our final report on the Review of Gender Identity in the 2021 England and Wales Census was published on 12 September 2024. The publication of this report concludes our review.
Learning from new evidence in Scotland’s Census, the Office for National Statistics (ONS) wrote to us on 5 September 2024 to request that the gender identity estimates from Census 2021 should no longer be accredited official statistics and should instead be classified as official statistics in development.
We have written to ONS to support its proposal to publish the Census 2021 gender identity statistics in England and Wales as official statistics in development rather than accredited official statistics. We found that the issues that we highlight in the final report are unique to the statistics on gender identity and therefore all other outputs from the Census 2021 in England and Wales are unaffected by this decision and remain designated as accredited official statistics.
Our final report sets out the details of our regulatory decision and shares our recommendations to ONS on the steps it must take to help users of the census gender identity statistics understand their strengths and limitations. In addition, we have also set out the development work we consider is required on the Government Statistical Service (GSS) gender identity harmonised standard.
The ONS wrote to us on 11 December 2024 updating on their progress towards meeting the recommendations in the final report.
Previous OSR publications on this topic
We published an interim report on 9 October 2023. The report set out our interim findings based on OSR’s review of the testing, quality assurance, communication and engagement with users undertaken by ONS.
OSR Review Correspondence
- 11 December 2024 Emma Rourke to Ed Humpherson on the GSS workplan towards new harmonised standards for sex and gender identity
- 12 September 2024 Ed Humpherson to Emma Rourke – Conclusions of OSR’s review of gender identity estimates for England and Wales from Census 2021
- 05 September 2024 Emma Rourke to Ed Humpherson – Gender identity statistics
- 09 October 2023 Ed Humpherson to Jen Woolford – Review of 2021 England and Wales Census data on Gender Identity: Interim report
- 24 April 2023 Ed Humpherson to Jen Woolford: Statistics on Gender Identity based on the 2021 England and Wales Census data
- 19 June 2023 Ed Humpherson to Jen Woolford: Update on the Review of 2021 England and Wales Census data on Gender Identity