How is ethnicity reported, described, and analysed in health research in the UK? A bibliographical review and focus group discussions with young refugees

BMC Public Health

Research

Robert Aldridge¹  Ruth Blackburn²  Katie Harron²  Joseph Lam² 

[1] Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation, University of Washington, 98195, Seattle, WA, USA;UCL Institute of Health Informatics, 222 Euston Rd, NW1 2DA, London, UK;UCL Great Ormond Street Institute of Child Health, 30 Guilford St, WC1N 1EH, London, UK;

关键词: Racism;    Ethnicity;    Migrants;    Administrative data;    Data linkage;   

DOI  :  10.1186/s12889-023-16947-3

 received in 2023-07-17, accepted in 2023-10-10,  发布年份 2023

来源: Springer

【 摘 要 】

BackgroundThe ethnicity data gap pertains to 3 major challenges to address ethnic health inequality: 1) Under-representation of ethnic minorities in research; 2) Poor data quality on ethnicity; 3) Ethnicity data not being meaningfully analysed. These challenges are especially relevant for research involving under-served migrant populations in the UK. We aimed to review how ethnicity is captured, reported, analysed and theorised within policy-relevant research on ethnic health inequities.MethodsWe reviewed a selection of the 1% most highly cited population health papers that reported UK data on ethnicity, and extracted how ethnicity was recorded and analysed in relation to health outcomes. We focused on how ethnicity was obtained (i.e. self reported or not), how ethnic groups were categorised, whether justification was provided for any categorisation, and how ethnicity was theorised to be related to health.We held three 1-h-long guided focus groups with 10 young people from Nigeria, Turkistan, Syria, Yemen and Iran. This engagement helped us shape and interpret our findings, and reflect on.1) How should ethnicity be asked inclusively, and better recorded?2) Does self-defined ethnicity change over time or context? If so, why?ResultsOf the 44 included papers, most (19; 43%) used self-reported ethnicity, categorised in a variety of ways. Of the 27 papers that aggregated ethnicity, 13 (48%) provided justification. Only 8 of 33 papers explicitly theorised how ethnicity related to health.The focus groups agreed that 1) Ethnicity should not be prescribed by others; individuals could be asked to describe their ethnicity in free-text which researchers could synthesise to extract relevant dimensions of ethnicity for their research; 2) Ethnicity changes over time and context according to personal experience, social pressure, and nationality change; 3) Migrants and non-migrants’ lived experience of ethnicity is not fully inter-changeable, even if they share the same ethnic category.ConclusionsEthnicity is a multi-dimensional construct, but this is not currently reflected in UK health research studies, where ethnicity is often aggregated and analysed without justification. Researchers should communicate clearly how ethnicity is operationalised for their study, with appropriate justification for clustering and analysis that is meaningfully theorised. We can only start to tackle ethnic health inequity by treating ethnicity as rigorously as any other variables in our research.

【 授权许可】

CC BY   
© BioMed Central Ltd., part of Springer Nature 2023

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