Nissa Finney, Professor of Human Geography at the University of St Andrews, explains how the Evidence for Equality National Survey (EVENS) set out to close Britain’s ‘ethnicity data gap’ – and why it’s now being used as a model for how inclusive data should be done.
“EVENS presents both a challenge and a model for other data producers”
That’s how a new impact case study on the Evidence for Equality National Survey (EVENS) sums up its legacy. Five years after fieldwork ended, the dataset is still shaping national policy – and other organisations are increasingly building their own research on the model it created.
The challenge that EVENS was built to answer is that racially minoritised communities are often underrepresented in the data that shapes research, policy and public debate. This is known as the “ethnicity data gap” – that the persistence of inequalities is in part a consequence of the gaps in evidence used to understand them.
EVENS was designed to close that gap directly, developed by the Centre on the Dynamics of Ethnicity (CoDE) using a partnership-based approach.
As the first and largest survey of its kind ever conducted in Britain, it captures the experiences of ethnic and religious minority communities in a period of unprecedented social change: the COVID-19 pandemic.
This data, available to access through the UK Data Service, has gone on to shape health strategy, housing policy, and parliamentary scrutiny across the UK.
Why EVENS offers a novel model
EVENS broke grounds in three ways:
- It was one of the first large-scale surveys in the social sciences to use non-probability sampling at scale to reach communities that conventional surveys miss.
- It captured 20 distinct ethnic minority groups rather than the five or six typical of national surveys.
- It embedded co-production with thirteen race equality organisations, so that communities shaped the survey’s design, recruitment and communications from within the communities it sought to reach.
The result is a dataset that couldn’t have been produced through conventional means and is proof that large-scale, rigorous social research can rest on genuine community partnership rather than extractive data collection.
What the model looks like in practice
EVENS has been taken up by the voluntary and community sector as a practical tool for race equality work – not only as a source of evidence, but as a model for how inclusive data can be produced.
The EVENSinACTION programme puts EVENS findings directly into the hands of the voluntary and community sector organisations who helped shape the survey in the first place.
For example, Friends, Families and Travellers used the data to highlight the racism and discrimination faced by Gypsy, Roma and Traveller people.
This research showed that 62% of Gypsies and Travellers had experienced racial abuse, which was highest out of all minority ethnic groups surveyed.
BEMIS drew on EVENS data to document ethnic inequalities and experiences of ethnic minorities in Scotland in terms of COVID-19, bereavement, racism, ethnic and national belonging and political trust.
This report shone the light on some of the realities lived by ethnic and religious minority people in Scotland following the pandemic. For example, 1 in 4 ethnic minitories experienced recent racist assault and ten percent had suffered recent racist physical attack.
It’s a rare example of a national dataset feeding back into the communities that helped produce it, rather than data flowing only one way from communities to researchers.
From model to movement
The EVENS dataset and research outputs based on it are still doing exactly what they were built to do: being used across policy, practice and research to drive action on ethnic inequality in Britain.
At a local level, the EVENS analysis informed a Roma Health Needs Assessment (PDF) published in February 2024, feeding directly into the Leeds City Council and West Yorkshire Integrated Care Board Joint Strategic Assessment (PDF), shaping the region’s Health and Wellbeing Strategy.
At a national level, research on Ethnic inequalities and homelessness in the UK, with the Centre for Homelessness Impact, draws on EVENS as part of the wider emerging research landscape on ethnic inequalities in housing. This has been referenced in the UK Government’s National Plan to End Homelessness, the strategy setting out the long-term vision to end homelessness and rough sleeping in England.
Most recently, it was cited directly in the Scottish Government’s Race Equality Anti-Racism Delivery Plan – a sign of its continued relevance five years after fieldwork began.
“There is a substantial and well-established evidence base demonstrating the existence of systemic racism in Scotland. […] Further research, such as the Evidence for Equality National Survey, document widespread experiences of racial insult, unfair treatment in education, employment, and policing, and significantly higher levels of worry about racism harassment among adversely racialised communities in Scotland compared with England and Wales.”
Scottish Government Race Equality Anti-Racism Delivery Plan
EVENS is not only a landmark dataset but a living resource – one that continues to shape how ethnic inequality is understood, measured and acted upon across British public life.
The ‘ethnicity data gap’ is a challenge that is still being answered, and EVENS provides a hopeful model for further action and innovation.
Read the full impact case study by Professor Nissa Finney for detailed evidence on the impact, engagement, reach and findings of the Evidence for Equality National Survey.
About the author:
Nissa Finney is Professor of Human Geography at the University of St Andrews.
She has published and taught widely on neighbourhood change; community cohesion, integration and segregation; ethnic inequalities and housing; and residential mobility.
Nissa currently leads the Evidence for Equality National Survey (EVENS) project within the Centre on the Dynamics of Ethnicity (CoDE) and the Community Resilience project with the Centre for Population Change. You can find details of Nissa’s current work and publications via her research profile.
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