Sex, gender identity, trans status - data collection and publication: guidance

In February 2024 the Office for Statistics Regulation (OSR) published their own guidance on the collection of sex and gender identity in official statistics. This guidance is intended to support official statistics producers in applying the principles of the Code of Practice for Statistics when making decisions about the collection and reporting of statistics and data about sex and gender identity.

The core principles of both sets of guidance align and can be used together. Specifically, they both emphasise that producers should:

• Be aware of what they are collecting (sex, gender, or both), what the definitions they are using and why this is the right thing to collect in their context
• Be content that what they are collecting meets the needs of users, and explain this information as straightforwardly as possible both to users and respondents. 
• Consider conducting user engagement and question testing in the event of new collections or changes to questions.
• Not conflate terms on reporting (i.e. they should not report on gender if they have used a question on sex).

In Scottish Government’s Non-Binary Equality Action Plan, we have committed to a review of how well the Chief Statistician’s Sex and Gender in Data Guidance has been adopted and user engagement with stakeholders by the end of 2024. We will then plan to potentially update the guidance and conduct further stakeholder feedback in due course. We will provide updates on this work via the Scottish Government Statistics Blog.

We recognise that this is a changing space and can be confusing for those collecting data or producing statistics. The Chief Statistician can provide practical advice and support to those collecting data on sex and gender in Scotland, recognising the changing landscape in this space. If you have any queries, please contact statistics.enquiries@gov.scot.