Asking an ethnicity survey question provides you with valuable demographic data about respondents, which can be used for more thorough research or developing future business strategies. However, writing race-ethnicity questions for a survey can be quite tricky.
Firstly, this topic is rather sensitive, so you need to make sure you don’t offend respondents. Secondly, you need to know which answer options should be offered in order to gather accurate data.
And even though writing them is complicated, avoiding race-ethnicity survey questions is not an option. The information you collect through them is essential for every type of research—you just have to learn how to create them successfully.
This article will cover the best practices for making a survey question about race and ethnicity, including the best way to ask about ethnicity in a survey and ethnicity options for a survey that should be included in your next questionnaire.
What is an ethnicity survey question?
Gathering demographic data about respondents is crucial for successful survey research. Survey questions about race, ethnicity, and nationality are important demographic questions that provide insight about your target audience.
Race and ethnicity survey questions provide information about respondents’ ancestral background, traditions, customs, beliefs, language, and religion, among other things. Including an ethnicity question in your questionnaire is essential for understanding your target audience and what might be causing a certain phenomenon.
Like other demographic survey questions, an ethnicity question gives you the option to cross-tabulate results and compare answers across different categories to see if ethnicity or racial background play a role in respondents’ preferences, choices, and opinions. It can also help to better profile your target audience and improve business decisions.
When should an ethnicity survey question be used in a questionnaire?
Asking an ethnicity question plays an important role in many research fields. When conducting market research, it can help you profile your target audience and better understand their opinions, values, preferences, and choices.
For example, including a race/ethnicity survey question in product research surveys helps determine if customers’ racial and ethnic background is influencing their consumer choices.
Gathering demographic data through an ethnicity survey is crucial for understanding customer and employee experience and creating an inclusive culture. It is also valuable in social science research and other research fields.
Here’s a list of survey research examples where you can benefit from including race and ethnicity survey questions:
- Market research surveys.
- Customer satisfaction surveys.
- Product research surveys.
- Marketing surveys.
- HR surveys and various other employee surveys.
- Academic research and education surveys.
- Healthcare surveys.
- Public sector surveys.
The difference between ethnicity and race
When writing ethnicity questions, it is crucial to fully understand what ethnicity is—and how it differs from race. Otherwise, you risk offending or confusing respondents and lowering the survey’s completion rates, not to mention gathering false information because adequate answers were not provided.
The biggest difference between ethnicity and race is that ethnicity can be changed, while race can not.
Race refers to biological heritage, which is the same no matter where someone is born or brought up. Different races differ based on biological features such as facial features and hair, eye, and skin color.
Ethnicity refers to the learned and accepted customs, traditions, behaviors, and beliefs of a particular culture. It can be changed because certain beliefs and customs can be rejected or migration can alter traditions and beliefs.
For example, you can tell a caucasian person just by their physical traits, but this doesn’t tell you anything about their ethnic background. They can be from the US, Russia, Canada, or France, just as an Asian person may be from China, Japan, or Korea.
List of ethnicities for survey questions
When you’ve decided to include an ethnicity question in a survey template, make sure the correct ethnicity survey options are offered.
Just as people learn to distinguish ethnicity from race, surveys should do the same. It is best to ask race and ethnicity survey questions separately.
According to the US census bureau, these categories are answer options when asking about race:
- White or Caucasian
- Asian
- Black or African American
- American Indian or Alaska Native
- Native Hawaiian or Other Pacific Islander
- Multiracial
Each of these answers should be followed by categories of ethnic groups that apply to the particular race so that you can get more in-depth information about the origins of respondents.
For example, when researching Hispanic, Latino, or Spanish origin, this is the list of ethnicities for a survey to include: Mexican or Mexican American, Puerto Rican, Chicano, Cuban, Colombian, Salvadoran, Dominican, etc.
How to ask about ethnicity in a survey: Best practices
The best way to ask about ethnicity in a survey is to be transparent about the data being gathered and as inclusive as possible to ensure no respondents feel left out. When writing this type of question, make sure to:
- Explain why the information is needed and how it will be used.
- Give respondents the option to skip a question.
- Use checkboxes to allow for the selection of multiple answers.
- Add open-ended questions where race or ethnicity can be specified by respondents.
Following these practices will help increase your survey completion rate, allow respondents to feel safe about providing information, and the gathering of more accurate data.
Race and ethnicity survey question example
Some think it best to ask about race and ethnic groups separately, while others go for a combined approach. Also, adding a Hispanic origin question to your race/ethnicity survey question is highly important in the US.
With our survey software, especially its question branching feature, you can choose which survey ethnicity categories to provide based on the respondent’s answer to the question about race.
When it comes to the wording of questions, it has recently become common to avoid the terms race and ethnicity altogether and make questions as neutral as possible.
Keeping all of this in mind, here is an example of how a comprehensive ethnicity question should look:
Which category best describes you? Please select all that apply.
- White or Caucasian (followed by categories such as English, Irish, German, Italian, etc.)
- Asian (followed by categories such as Chinese, Korean, Asian Indian, Filipino, etc.)
- Black or African American (followed by categories such as African American, Black British, Nigerian, Ethiopian, Jamaican, etc.)
- Hispanic, Latino, or Spanish origin (followed by categories such as Mexican or Mexican American, Colombian, Puerto Rican, Cuban, etc.)
- American Indian or Alaska Native (followed by categories such as Mayan, Aztec, Blackfeet tribe, Navajo nation, etc.)
- Native Hawaiian or Other Pacific Islander (followed by categories such as Native Hawaiian, Tongan, Fijian, Samoan, etc.)
- Another racial-ethnic group not listed (please specify)
Make sure to allow respondents the option of checking more than one answer.
Advantages and disadvantages of race and ethnicity questions
As with all demographic questions, there are both advantages and disadvantages to asking for information on race and ethnic groups. The biggest limitation is that this type of question can confuse or offend some participants, which can lower response rates and deprive you of valuable data.
However, all of this can be avoided by following the practices mentioned above. Then you get the benefits:
- Understanding if racial and ethnic background influences people’s opinions, preferences, and choices.
- Meeting the needs of all groups.
- Seeing if any areas of discrimination need to be addressed.
- Showing participants that your organization is inclusive and values diversity.
With our survey software, you can make thousands of questionnaires that will help gather valuable data, improve customer experience, and grow your business!
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