Ethnic, Religious and Language Groups: Towards a Set of Rules for Data Collection and Statistical Analysis

The establishment of reliable and authoritative figures on ethnic, religious, and language groups plays a prominent role in efforts to fight discrimination and foster individual human rights as well as minority group rights. However, there is no consensus among statisticians, demographers and social scientists at large concerning standards to be used in the identification of minority groups and in the processing and analyzing generated data.

This article identifies different data sources and measurement problems of ethnic, religious and language groups, building on the rich international experience to date. The conclusion presents a set of rules and guidelines for the improvement of data collection, especially in the context population censuses and sample surveys, as well as for data analysis.