Compendium of Practices on Equality Data

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The subgroup started its work by identifying a number of common gaps and challenges in EU Member States and Norway, including the lack of a coordinated approach for equality data collection and use; insufficient resources and awareness of the importance of collecting equality data; incomplete identification of population groups at risk of discrimination due to overreliance on proxies; and insufficient consultation with relevant stakeholders in the design and implementation of equality data collection.

The subgroup has developed the following products to support Member States:

• Guidance note on the collection and use of equality data based on racial or ethnic origin
• Guidelines on improving the collection and use of equality data
• Compendium of Practices on Equality Data
• Diagnostic mapping tool
• What are ‘equality data’?.

Guidance note on the collection and use of equality data based on racial or ethnic origin

Responding to the EU anti-racism action plan 2020-25 and calls by other groups to improve the availability of equality data disaggregated by racial or ethnic origin, the Subgroup on equality data agreed to develop a practical guidance note.

The 2021 Guidance note (available in 22 languages) aims to:

• identify challenges to collecting data on racial or ethnic origin.
• highlight promising paths towards a more standardised and consistent approach to this.
• provide practical guidance on effective ways to produce comprehensive, reliable, comparable and regular data at national level.
• help public sector institutions and other relevant stakeholders to identify disparities based on ethnic or racial origin and effectively combat racism and structural discrimination

Guidelines on improving the collection and use of equality data

The 2018 Guidelines on improving the collection and use of equality data (available in 22 languages) feature a number of concrete institutional and operational steps that EU Member States can undertake to enhance the availability and quality of equality data and to promote its effective use in developing evidence-based equality and non-discrimination policies.

The guidelines are divided into:

• institutional and structural guidelines on how to set up structures that enable a systematic, long-term and cooperative approach to collection and use of equality data; and
• operational guidelines on how to ensure comprehensiveness, timeliness, validity, reliability and representativeness of equality data and to improve their comparability.

1. Institutional and structural guidelines

   1. Map existing sources of equality data and identify data gaps
   2. Foster inter-institutional cooperation in the collection and use of equality data
   3. Set up a data hub on equality and non-discrimination
   4. Build institutional capacity to collect robust and reliable equality data
   5. Facilitate effective use of equality data

2. Operational guidelines

   6. Ensure comprehensiveness of equality data
   7. Mainstream equality data into EU and national surveys
   8. Ensure regular and timely equality data collection
   9. Enhance validity and reliability of equality data
   10. Ensure representativeness of equality data
   11. Improve comparability of equality data

As a complement to these guidelines, the subgroup prepared a diagnostic mapping tool that EU Member States can use to assess the availability of equality data collected at national level and a compendium of practices that can provide inspiration when implementing the guidelines.

Compendium of practices

The Compendium of Practices on Equality Data aims to provide inspiration to EU Member States when implementing the guidelines on improving the collection and use of equality data. It collates practices of Member States on equality data, providing information on the background and rationale underlying the practice, the way it was implemented, the main output, technical information, as well as a contact address for further information. The guidelines of the compendium have been updated to include selected guidelines from the Guidance note on the collection and use of equality data based on racial or ethnic origin, and the Guidance note on the collection and use of data for LGBTIQ equality.

Diagnostic mapping tool

The diagnostic mapping tool can be used by Member States to map existing sources of equality data and identify gaps in data related to specific grounds of discrimination and/or areas of life, as recommended by Guideline no. 1. The information gathered through the mapping tool can also be used as a basis for setting up a data hub on equality and non-discrimination, as recommended by Guideline no. 3.

What are ‘equality data’?

The European handbook on equality data, and the Guidelines on improving the collection and use of equality data define ‘equality data’ as any piece of information that is useful for the purposes of describing, analysing, reasoning about and decision-making on the state of equality. The information may be quantitative or qualitative in nature. It could include aggregate data that reflect inequalities and their causes or effects in societies.

Equality statistics can be compiled from multiple data sources, such as population censuses, administrative registers, household and individual surveys, victimisation surveys, and attitudinal surveys. Other sources could encompass complaints data (including aggregate profiles of complainants and offenders, for example), criminal justice data (including court statistics and data on outcomes of court cases, as well as compensation offered/sanctions applied, for example), as well as other avenues of data collection, encompassing discrimination testing, diversity monitoring by employers, CSO and service providers, or data related to artificial intelligence, including training data, data analysed by AI and data on AI outputs.

Data disaggregated by certain personal characteristics – including age, sex, racial or ethnic origin, religion or belief, disability, sexual orientation, gender identity or being intersex/ having a variation of sex characteristics – can be used for producing equality data, at an aggregated level for statistical purposes, if this is done voluntarily, in full compliance with legal provisions and the corresponding exceptions.