A sensitive question? The effect of an ethnic background question in surveys

Nearly half of European countries choose not to collect data on their citizens’ ethnicity. One of the reasons is related to ethnic background being, potentially, a sensitive issue. We explore this social sensitivity in relation to questions asking about respondents’ ethnic background through a survey experiment that compares two multicultural and liberal democracies with different traditions related to the collection of data on residents’ ethnic background: Sweden and Canada. The findings demonstrate that, when the ethnicity question produced a significant effect on survey evaluations, it was always positive. Similar results were found in both countries. Thus, we conclude that—in terms of survey methodology and the reaction of individuals to such questions—there does not exist a valid justification to omit questions on ethnic background from surveys or censuses in pluralist societies.