The Office for National Statistics “hugely overestimated” the number of transgender people in the UK, Whitehall sources have claimed, as the body admitted it could have carried out “additional probing” before releasing the controversial data.
An official inquiry by the Office for Statistics Regulation (OSR) into the census finding that 260,000 people identified as transgender has drawn up several “lessons learned” from the way the data was handled by the ONS.
They include a conclusion the ONS should do more to communicate “uncertainty” about the data and should have sought external “quality assurance”.
The inquiry’s findings are likely to exacerbate tensions between ministers and the ONS after the body admitted earlier this month it had underestimated the size of the economy by nearly 2 per cent as of the end of 2021 – meaning Britain recovered to its pre-pandemic level almost two years ago.
A Whitehall source suggested the ONS executive, led by Prof Sir Ian Diamond, may have lost its “credibility” to accurately record sex and gender, based on its handling of the trans issue together with its separate loss of a legal challenge over the wording of the 2021 census.
The source said it was now clear the 2021 figures on gender, released in January, “hugely overestimated” the number of transgender people – a view they said was shared by multiple ministers.
The inquiry into the findings was sparked after academics warned the wording of the census question, “is the gender you identify with the same as your sex registered at birth?” may have skewed the answers for respondents whose first language is not English, or who are less familiar with the language of gender identity.
Earlier this year, academics found those who speak English poorly were five times more likely to be transgender.
It is, on the face of it, a ridiculous question: “is the gender you identify with the same as your sex registered at birth?” You'd need to be conversant with the whole stupid debate to understand what on earth they were asking.
Here's the abstract from the April paper from Oxford sociology professor Michael Biggs:
The 2021 Census of England and Wales was the first in the world to elicit information on gender identity from an entire population. This paper argues that its results are implausible on the dimensions of geography, education, ethnicity, and religion. The results contradict external sources of data such as referrals to gender clinics and signatures on a pro-transgender petition. The results are also internally inconsistent when the various categories of gender identity are correlated across geography,and when compared to the results for sexual orientation.The spurious results were produced by a badly flawed question on gender identity, which was originally formulated by a transgender campaigning organization. The question evidently confused a substantial number of respondents who erroneously declared their gender identity to differ from their natal sex. Confusion is manifested by the overrepresentation of people lacking English proficiency or educational qualifications in the most suspect gender categories. These findings demonstrate how a faulty survey question can systematically distort our apprehension of the social world.
In particular the London boroughs of Newham and Brent, which have a significant percentage of residents who speak English as a second language, recorded the highest proportion of transgender people in the UK.
The Deputy Director at The ONS is transwoman Alison Pritchard, as it happens.
It's all a bit of a mess....
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