Following up on our recent research into UK-wide poverty data gaps, the RSS and Centre for Public Data are pleased to announce additional research that will explore data gaps in a new context.
Funded by the Joseph Rowntree Foundation (JRF) Insight Infrastructure programme and in partnership with JRF Northern Ireland, this work will examine longstanding gaps in Northern Ireland's ethnicity and poverty data. Our initial focus will be on updating findings from previous JRF research that identified major shortcomings in Northern Ireland's available ethnicity and poverty-relevant data.
There have been several positive developments since that research was conducted. For example, Census 2021 Comprehensive Microdata enables accredited researchers to study relationships between ethnicity and key economic and social outcomes in greater depth than previously available.
Throughout the remainder of 2026, we will assess how far those developments have gone towards fixing the most pressing data gaps and identify where improvements are still necessary and how to enact them.
To that end, we invite interested individuals and organisations to share their perspectives on the state of ethnicity and poverty data. We will be conducting semi-structured interviews over the coming months to understand broader perspectives on these topics and where people encounter problems in their work.
We are especially keen to hear from people who meet at least one of the following criteria in the Northern Ireland context:
-
Experience in frontline organisations that support or advocate for people from minority ethnic backgrounds, especially where this involves some direct or indirect engagement with data or evidence more broadly.
-
Experience or knowledge of policymaking processes behind those data sources and the legal, institutional, or regulatory frameworks that govern them.
-
Experience working with major data sources relating to ethnicity and / or poverty, living standards, deprivation, or related topics.
-
Knowledge of surveys or administrative data sources that collect information about ethnicity or poverty-related subjects, including how these are produced.
Interview subjects can be from any background with experience of the above, be it through academic, governmental, NGO, or private-sector channels.
If you are interested in contributing to this research as an interview subject or simply want to discuss anything related to it, please reach out to RSS Policy Researcher Dakota Langhals at d.langhals@rss.org.uk.