Which are the ethnic groups that are particularly difficult to allocate to Census categories?

Some write-in answers are more difficult to allocate into Census categories, as they can appear under a number of different headings. For the 2001 Census, these groups have been allocated according to the main category in which the answer was written.

For example, if Sikh has been written under 'Asian or Asian British' then the answer has been allocated to the 'Other Asian' category. But if Sikh has been written under 'White', it will have been allocated into the 'Other White' category.

If you need to ask specifically about these ethnic groups, then you will have difficulty in placing responses back into the Census categories to enable you to compare your results with 2001 Census data.

Main write-in responses			Details / examples
Arab
Buddhist
Hindu
Iranian
Israeli
Jewish
Kurdish
Latin American	Cuban, Puerto Rican, Dominican, Hispanic
Moroccan
Multi-ethnic islands	Mauritian, Seychellois, Maldivian, St Helena
Muslim
Other Middle Eastern	Iraqi, Lebanese, Yemeni
Other North African
Sikh
South American	includes Central American

If you need to collect data on these ethnic groups, they should be added as sub-groups of the appropriate main ethnic group in the Census question.

For example, to collect data on Sikhs, you could add further sub-divisions to the 'Indian' category.

This enables answers to be aggregated to the Census category for comparative purposes. In addition to 'Sikh', other suitable sub-categories under 'Indian' might include 'Tamil' and 'Other Indian', if there were significant numbers of Sikhs and Tamils in the area being surveyed.

As data are made available from the 2001 Census, more advice will be given as to the main headings under which the majority of these other write-in answers appeared.

This page last revised: Tuesday 4 November 2003