A recent review by the Office for National Statistics (ONS) has raised concerns that the number of transgender people in the UK may have been overestimated in the 2021 census. According to reports, roughly one in 200 people in England and Wales over the age of 16 identified as a different gender to their sex at birth. However, the ONS has since discovered that those who do not speak English as their first language may have misunderstood the census question and inadvertently reported their gender identification inaccurately.
The census survey posed the question, “Is the gender you identify with the same as your sex registered at birth?” Of those responding, 0.5% of the population (around 262,000 people) answered “no”. However, at least some respondents with lower levels of English proficiency may have given an incorrect answer suggesting they were trans. While the number of mistaken respondents is thought to be small, it could have impacted areas with higher levels of non-English speakers, leading to potential inaccuracies.
A professor of sociology at Oxford University, Michael Biggs, raised concerns about the survey’s accuracy in April, noting that a surprising proportion of those identifying as trans did not speak English or Welsh as their primary language. While only 10% of respondents did not speak English as their main language, they made up 29% of the total number of trans people. For example, in the London Borough of Newham, where 35% of residents do not speak English as their first language, 1.51% of people identified as trans.
As a result of these inconsistencies, the ONS has been downgraded from “accredited official statistics” to “official statistics in development”. However, other statistics produced from the census are still considered to be fully accurate. The ONS previously had defended its methodology, stating that their estimates were in line with “international comparators”.
This discovery by the ONS highlights the importance of ensuring surveys are accurately understood and interpreted by all participants, regardless of their language proficiency. The implications of wrongly reported data can have far-reaching consequences, particularly for marginalized communities such as trans people. It also presents an opportunity for future census surveys to consider alternative ways of posing questions and eliciting accurate responses from all participants, regardless of their cultural or linguistic backgrounds
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