All members of the NDI champions group were initially contacted as part of this audit, covering 41 public sector groups.These contacts, and CSO attendance at events relating to equality data which led to other new contacts, provided 48 groups who were contacted during this audit.
The estimated response rate is 75% and a further 10% said they had no relevant data. The audit work described below covers 107 data sets.
Please note that the number of groups contacted, and therefore the number of data sets audited, was limited by the size of the NDI champions group. This audit may not have reached all data sets in the public sector and so may not be complete.
It is also a relevant note that not all of these data sets are available to the public or may only be available for use in an aggregate form.
The number of sources listing age and gender as a data point was higher than for those identifying any of the other dimensions of equality. This is likely to reflect the fact that age and gender are routinely captured in data collection and are used as standard breakdowns in most statistical releases. In contrast, some of the other characteristics, for example, sexual orientation and religion, are not routinely included in data collection, so are listed in fewer of the resources in the audit.
Race was captured in only two data sets, the Census of Population and the Higher Education Authority (HEA) Equal Access Survey. However, race is not available for analysis from the HEA Equal Access Survey as there was a low response to this field. As the audit was complied, it became evident that many data sets include nationality or ethnicity but not race, so it was decided to include nationality and ethnicity with race.
Data on sexual orientation is rarely collected. The information on sexual orientation in the audit indicates that a question on marriage or civil partnership had a same sex option and does not reflect a marker on sexual orientation in the data set.
Just 34 of the data sets included in the audit have also responded with the further breakdown of each of the dimensions of equality with details on how the data is collected. For example, the further breakdown shows if age is collected as date of birth or as age in years, or an age grouping.
The data collected in the audit only shows high-level information on the data sets. It does not show us the overall coverage of data related to a cohort. In some data sets there may not be a large enough number of data points to allow analysis of a minority group.
| Table 1: Breakdown of Coverage for Dimensions of Equality | ||
| Dimension of Equality | Number of Data Sets | % Coverage |
| Gender | 68.0 | 0.6 |
| Age | 65.0 | 0.6 |
| Race1 | 26.0 | 0.2 |
| Marital Status | 25.0 | 0.2 |
| Disability | 24.0 | 0.2 |
| Family Status | 19.0 | 0.2 |
| Member of the Traveller Community | 12.0 | 0.1 |
| Sexual Orientation2 | 6.0 | 0.1 |
| Religion | 4.0 | 0.0 |
| 1Includes Nationality as well as Race | ||
| 2Relates to questions on same sex marriage/civil partnerships | ||
For many of the reported sources it was possible to allocate a theme. These were chosen to align with the 11 domains of well-being from the well-being budgeting team in the Department of Public Expenditure and Reform. It is important to note that some data sets were allocated multiple themes, so the total of this table will be greater than the number of data sets. All 11 themes are included in Table 2 below, including those to which no data set was allocated.
There were 51 data sets with a theme of Health, nearly half of all the data sets. Education & Skills has 26 data sets while Jobs & Earnings and Living Standards both had 21. The remaining themes have very few data sets in the audit.
| Table 2: Breakdown of Coverage for Themes | |
| Theme | Number of Data Sets |
| Health | 51 |
| Education & Skills | 26 |
| Jobs & Earnings | 21 |
| Living Standards | 21 |
| Culture & Identity | 5 |
| Housing | 5 |
| Personal Security | 2 |
| Income & Wealth | 1 |
| Work-Life Balance | 0 |
| Civic Engagement and Governance | 0 |
| Ireland’s Economy | 0 |
| Environment and Sustainability | 0 |
Just over half (55%) of the data sets have regular updates, at least once a year, with many having daily or weekly updates. About one in six (15%) data sets had an update of less often than once a year or were based on a one-off survey.
