Race and Ethnicity
Your Unique Heritage: How Ohio University Collects Racial and Ethnicity Data is about to change…
The election of President Barack Obama, son of a Black man from Kenya and a White woman from the United States, has prompted increased discussion about how we identify persons by race. For a rapidly increasing percentage of our population, the days of “check one box” to describe one’s heritage are coming to an end.
What are the significant changes?
Beginning in academic year 2010-2011, the US Department of Education (DOE) will require all colleges and universities to adopt a new framework for collecting self-reported racial and ethnic data. Instead of being asked to select one from a list of five racial descriptors, individuals will identify themselves as Hispanic/Latino or non-Hispanic/Latino, and then choose as many as apply from a list of five racial descriptors (American Indian/Alaska Native; Asian; Black or African American; Native Hawaiian or Other Pacific Islander; White). For additional information about each of these ethnic and racial descriptors, see DOE National Center for Education Statistics (NCES), Statistical Standards for Defining Race and Ethnic Data.
How will this impact Ohio University?
The DOE’s Final Guidance on Maintaining, Collecting and Reporting Racial and Ethnic Data to the US Department of Education (2007) sets forth guidelines for all educational institutions. The format changes will have significant impact on all colleges and universities. At Ohio University, for example, this means that all academic and administrative units that capture or utilize race and ethnic data will need to adjust their collection and reporting methods. From Admissions forms to Board of Regents reporting, from civil rights compliance monitoring to medical and health care and research, and tracking of employment, Ohio University will soon be migrating to new data collection framework for the tracking of employment, educational and co-curricular opportunity and participation. Intrinsic in this is a technological infrastructure for capturing, storing, and retrieving data in the new format.
Why is this change happening?
This change has been in the works for nearly two decades. In the early nineties, the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) began researching the best way to capture racial and ethnic demographic information. This included defining new race and ethnic categories, identifying the best process for acquiring the more accurate self-reported data, and defining the most representative and least burdensome categories for reporting out data. In 1997 the OMB issued the Revision to the Standards for the Classification of Federal Data on Race and Ethnicity, redefining the categories for race and ethnicity in the US. This document had an historic significance as it allowed people, for the first time, to "check more than one box" and choose all racial and ethnic descriptors that they believe describe their heritage. The 2000 US Census used this standard, and you will see the next evolution of the framework when you participate in the 2010 census. All government offices and agencies are expected to adopt this protocol for their own employees and the entities they serve.
Data reported in the 2010-2011 year must represent the new reporting categories. The DOE is allowing institutions to use either the old and/or the new categories before that time.
