Information pertaining to statement made by Chief Statistician: FOI releae

Information requested

Evidence that supports the statement made by the Chief Statistician in the 'Data collection and publication guidance on Sex, Gender Identity and Trans Status' publication that:

'For the vast majority of people, questions on someone’s sex and gender identity will provide the same response: female and woman/girl, or male and man/boy',

Response

Evidence in support of the statement is provided by the Scottish Health Survey (SHeS), which contains questions about both sex and gender identity.

The following table gives the percentage of adults (aged 16+) who responded to the sex and gender identity questions in the Scottish Health Survey (SHeS) in 2018 and 2019.

	Sex and gender identity the same	Sex and gender identity not the same**	Refused to answer gender identity question	Sample size (rounded to nearest 100)
SHeS 2018	97.8%	0.4%	1.8%	2,900
SHeS 2019	97.0%	0.4%	2.7%	3,000

This analysis is based on unweighted data.

*This analysis only includes adults who completed the household grid in SHeS, as the household grid includes the sex question for each individual in the household, and who responded to the self-complete module, which includes the gender identity question.
**Includes adults who responded ‘in another way’ to the gender identity question or responded in the opposite way to the sex question eg sex male and gender identity female

Information about the methodology of the Scottish Health Survey is available in the technical report, available here:

The Scottish Health Survey 2019 edition: Volume 2: Technical Report (www.gov.scot)

About FOI

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