Protocol - Ethnicity

Personnel and Training Required

The interviewer must be trained to conduct personal interviews with individuals from the general population. The interviewer must be trained and found to be competent (i.e., tested by an expert) at the completion of personal interviews.* The interviewer should be trained to prompt respondents further if a "don’t know" response is provided.

* There are multiple modes to administer this question (e.g., paper-and-pencil and computer-assisted interviews).

Equipment Needs

While the source instrument was developed to be administered by computer, the PhenX Working Group acknowledges these questions can be administered in a noncomputerized format (i.e., paper-and-pencil instrument). Computer software is necessary to develop computer-assisted instruments. The interviewer will require a laptop computer/handheld computer to administer a computer-assisted questionnaire.

Requirements

Mode of Administration

Interviewer-administered questionnaire

Life Stage:

Infant, Toddler, Child, Adolescent, Adult, Senior, Pregnancy

Participants:

An individual aged 18 years or older. May be asked of children via a proxy.

Selection Rationale

The question meets the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) standards for capturing data on ethnicity. An important variable for population stratification distinguishes those who self-identify as Hispanic/Latino. Vetted against other ethnicity questions, the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES) question was selected because it met OMB standards, was used on a major U.S. health study, and provides additional Hispanic/Latino categories.

Language

English, Spanish

Standards

Derived Variables

None

Process and Review

The Expert Review Panel #2 (ERP 2) reviewed the measures in the Demographics, Social Environments, and Environmental Exposures domains.

Guidance from ERP 2 includes:

• Updated protocol

• New Data Dictionary

Back-compatible: there are changes to the Data Dictionary, previous version of the Data Dictionary and Variable mapping in Toolkit archive (link)

Source

National Center for Health Statistics. (N.d.). National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES), 2013–2014, Demographics Module. Question numbers DMQ.241 and DMQ.253

General References

Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. (2000). Race and Ethnicity Code Set, Version 1.0.

Office of Management and Budget. Revisions to the Standards for the Classification of Federal Data on Race and Ethnicity. Federal Register Notice (10/30/97, Vol. 62, No. 210).

Protocol ID:

10502

Variables:

Measure Name:

Ethnicity

Release Date:

May 11, 2016

Definition

Question asking the respondent to identify whether he or she is of Hispanic, Latino, or Spanish origin. The U.S. Office of Management and Budget (OMB) standards for the classification of federal data on race and ethnicity state that "race and ethnicity may be thought of in terms of social and cultural characteristics as well as ancestry."

Purpose

Ethnicity is used to stratify study populations and to associate those populations with physical, geographic, biological, social, and cultural characteristics (e.g., Dominican). Ethnicity is a social and epidemiological factor, and individuals of some ethnicity are at greater risk for disease. By capturing the ethnicity of respondents, the researcher will be able to identify those who are or are not of Hispanic origin and will be able to stratify the study population accordingly.

Keywords

Demographics, ancestry, Hispanic, Latino, population stratification, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, CDC, National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey, NHANES