Despite hopes to launch a pilot project ahead of the 2021/22 academic year, UBC is still working on how to best gather race-based data about its students.
Over the past year the UBC Equity and Inclusion Office (EIO), the Planning and Institutional Research Office, Enrolment Services, the Office of the Chief Information Officer and Data Governance have been collaborating together on a student race demographic data project.
The project was launched in fall 2020, after UBC President Santa Ono made several commitments to racial justice on UBC’s campuses. At the time, EIO staff said that the lack of race-based data could be an obstacle to following through on some of those commitments.
The project is intending to pilot-test questions through an online survey in January 2022, several months after it was intended to launch originally. The delay, according to Stephanie McKeown, chief institutional research officer, was a result of changes to the offices involved in the project.
“The development of student demographic data collection efforts at UBC were slightly delayed so that we could involve multiple offices within central administration and take a consistent and coordinated approach to this important initiative,” she said.
Currently the project team is working to create a standard set of questions to best collect the race-based data, while allowing for comparability with similar data from faculty and staff or even with other universities.
“We are holding focus groups to ask students how they would like to self identify for some of the questions around demographic data,” said McKeown. Over 200 people have signed up to participate in those focus groups.
Following qualitative analysis of the data collected from the focus groups, the questions will then be refined into a standard set. The project team plans to then roll out pilot tests of the surveys featuring the standard set of questions in January or February for both undergraduate and graduate students.
When asked how these questions might look specifically, Associate Vice-President Equity & Inclusion Sara Jane-Finlay said they’re still deciding. She cited past versions of the similar UBC Employment Equity Survey which only asked employees to identify within a specific racial or ethnic category only if they first identified as a “visible minority.” In contrast, the 2021 iteration of the survey asks everyone to identify regardless.
Their proposed timeline includes further focus groups in January or February in which students will be asked when they prefer this data to be collected — for example, when applying to UBC or throughout one’s degree — and about other aspects of the data collection process.
The team also mentioned many other factors they must consider during the project such as ensuring FIPPA and human rights compliance.
“We aim to have the project completed loosely by next fall,” said Elsie Achugbue, EIO director of institutional initiatives.