Councils admit diversity data ‘limited in accuracy’

Data collected by the UK research councils on the gender and ethnicity of applicants and award recipients is based on what people choose to disclose and is therefore limited in its accuracy, Research Councils UK has acknowledged.

RCUK’s third annual update of diversity data sets, published on 27 June, includes the categories “unknown” and “not disclosed” for the first time. Unknown refers to instances where individuals have not updated their details and therefore the research councils has received no usable response, while “not disclosed” refers to individuals who have consciously chosen not to disclose their information. 

The research councils aim to identify specific areas of concern for action by publishing data on gender, age, disability status and ethnicity and monitoring the data at a more in-depth level, RCUK said. This forms part of RCUK’s action plan to tackle equality, diversity and inclusion issues in research and “drive cultural change” in the research sector.