[NEW CHAPTER] Ethnicity categorisations and best practice

[ThomUK]

Cover high-level categories, and detail. Cover differences between NHS and ONS categorisations (if they exist) - keeping to primary sources eg. NHS data dictionary.

[Lextuga007]

This is a great issue and one I wish I'd blogged as I'd pulled something together a long time ago and can't find it anywhere!

I found some analysis used ethnicity categories related to staff for some surveys to be able to compare to that population but I much preferred using ONS because it helps with comparisons to the general public (the key being what you are comparing to). The census may be slightly different this year from pervious years too because I think there were two groups that they could identify as being much bigger than previously: Somali and Roma but after testing Somali wasn't put in as a main category but a sub-category.

https://www.ethnicity-facts-figures.service.gov.uk/style-guide/ethnic-groups

[Lextuga007]

Ethnicity grouping is different too between clinical systems and OpenSafely publishes its codelists from SystmOne. It is definitely grouped differently clinical systems like SystmOne and Rio and I'm guessing is different between Read codes and SNOMED.

https://docs.opensafely.org/ehrql/how-to/examples/#finding-each-patients-ethnicity https://www.opencodelists.org/codelist/opensafely/ethnicity-snomed-0removed/2e641f61/

[DCEW]

This could take into account the main takeaways from https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/standards-for-ethnicity-data/standards-for-ethnicity-data (esp section 3.2)

[DCEW]

Oh and a bit about how datasets harmonise conflicting data feeds wrt ethnicity, e.g. OHID CHIME model

[Lextuga007]

@DCEW The OHID CHIME model is not longer being used or updated - is this information reflected anywhere else?

[Lextuga007]

Research paper: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/24323951/ Completeness and usability of ethnicity data in UK-based primary care and hospital databases Rohini Mathur

Completeness and usability of ethnicity data in UK-based primary care and hospital databases - longer article

Results: 27.1% of all patients in the CPRD (1990-2012) have ethnicity recorded. This proportion rises to 78.3% for patients registered since April 2006. The ethnic breakdown of the CPRD is comparable to the UK censuses. 79.4% of HES inpatients, 46.8% of outpatients and 26.8% of A&E patients had their ethnicity recorded. Amongst those with ethnicity recorded on >1 occasion, consistency was over 90% in all data sets except for HES inpatients. Combining CPRD and HES increased completeness to 97%, with 85% of patients having the same ethnicity recorded in both databases.

Availability and use of UK based ethnicity data for health research