The UK Data Service is excited to announce the publication of a new impact case study exploring how the Evidence for Equality National Survey (EVENS) is shaping policy and practice on ethnic and religious inequality in Britain.
Racially minoritised communities are often underrepresented in the data that drive research, policy and public debate – a problem known as the “ethnicity data gap”. EVENS, the first and largest survey of its kind ever conducted in Britain, was developed to close that gap, capturing the experiences of ethnic and religious minority people during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Closing the ethnicity data gap
Authored by Professor Nissa Finney at the University of St Andrews, who leads the EVENS project with the Centre on the Dynamics of Ethnicity (CoDE), the case study traces how the survey was built through a partnership with thirteen race equality organisations.
With responses from 14,200 participants – 9,700 of them from ethnic and religious minority groups – EVENS captures 20 ethnic minority groups in disaggregated detail, far beyond the five or six typically reported in national surveys.
The dataset, deposited with and made freely available to access through the UK Data Service, covers everything from racism and discrimination to health, housing and political participation.
From evidence to impact
The case study sets out how EVENS has become a go-to evidence base well beyond the research community – shaping decisions from local council health assessments to national government strategy, and informing the work of parliamentary committees, NHS bodies and race equality organisations across Britain.
Its reach spans health, housing, homelessness and equality monitoring, with findings feeding into policy in England and Scotland alike.
Behind the data are real experiences: of racism, of financial hardship deepened by the pandemic, of communities navigating housing and health systems that weren’t built with them in mind. This case study traces this journey from evidence to impact in detail.
Read the case study to learn more about this research and its impact.