4 Approaches to Multiple-Race Questions

by Heather Krause | Oct 27, 2022 | Analysis, Data Collection & Sourcing

The Data Equity Framework works on equity between any categorization of people in your data, not just race, so we don’t publish many race-specific articles simply because it’s a narrower subject than our tools address. However! In person, during workshops, and on the We All Count Forum, one of the most common topics right now is how to design, collect and analyze questions in which respondents can select more than one race.

Why, when, and for whom we would use a multiple-race question are all really, really important questions that I’ll talk a little bit about at the end of the article, but before that, I want to talk about a few different ways we can analyze these questions.

Let’s say our multiple-race question looks like this:

What category describes you? (Select all that apply):

American Indian
Black
LatinX
White

What makes this a multiple-race question is the “select all that apply” next to the title. Some respondents will likely check two or more of those boxes.

Let me be clear; this example is not a suggestion. How the question is phrased, the use of “American Indian”, the…