“Explain or change”: The quality and uses of ethnicity data in universities and healthcare organisation in England

“Explain or change” was a key term that came into currency in the UK from 2016 onwards to put the onus on public institutions to account for disparities in outcomes on the basis of class, gender, and ethnicity in the main. One of the most prominent outcomes of this policy initiative was the government Race Disparity Audit. This article aims to go behind the headline figures to understand what it means to either “explain” or “change” figures and policies around race/ethnicity in particular. It outlines the findings of a survey and some interviews with staff working in the NHS in London and in universities in England. The findings point to difficulties with the quality of data generated by these organisations, as well as the uses of data. Practitioners feel that data is incomplete and do not provide the routes to policy measures that will make a clear difference to outcomes. At the same time, there is a feeling there is a lack of will to use data to either explain or change their organisation's response to race inequality. Thus, this article concludes that the use of ethnicity data remains the main concern for many participants in this study.