Chapter 5. Getting it Out: Coding, Reporting, Storage, and Bridging
5.2 Data Coding
- The Final Guidance does not dictate any coding schemes. States are allowed to design their own coding structure, as long as they are able to report the racial and ethnic data using the seven aggregate categories.
- The five race categories with respondents allowed to choose multiple races yields a combination of 62 racial combination codes. (If a race category is broken out in more detail, that is, specific Asian subgroups, the number of categories could increase exponentially.) Two more codes may be assigned for respondents who selected Hispanic or non-Hispanic, without any race selected or assigned (note that this is an instance of missing data rather than a valid category). A full list of these 62 codes can be found in NCES's Statistical Standards. It is also included in exhibit 5.1 of this guide. Note that NCES statistical standard codes contain two codes for “no race specified or refused” that are for postsecondary institutions and cannot be used for K–12 reporting to ED.
- Besides coding each race and ethnicity as single items, there are other approaches to coding. For example, each race and ethnicity category can be assigned as a “Y/N” or “1/0” in the system, such as:
Hispanic/Latino |
Y/N |
1/0 |
American Indian/Alaska Native |
Y/N |
1/0 |
Asian |
Y/N |
1/0 |
Black or African American |
Y/N |
1/0 |
Hawaiian Native/Other Pacific Islander |
Y/N |
1/0 |
White |
Y/N |
1/0 |
Another format for this coding scheme is to assign a 1/0 for each of the race and ethnic categories. This code system could be suggested for storage, not data entry/recording.
|
American Indian/ Alaskan Native |
Asian |
Black or African American |
Hawaiian Native/ Other Pacific Islander |
White |
Hispanic/ Latino |
Name 1 |
1 |
1 |
0 |
0 |
0 |
0 |
Name 2 |
0 |
0 |
1 |
0 |
0 |
1 |
… |
|
|
|
|
|
|
100000 |
American Indian or Alaska Native |
010000 |
Asian |
001000 |
Black |
000100 |
Native Hawaiian or Other Pacific Islander |
000010 |
White |
000001 |
Hispanic |
110000 |
American Indian or Alaska Native and Asian |
101000 |
American Indian or Alaska Native and Black |
… |
… |
111111 |
All five races and Hispanic |
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