A new survey will examine the lives of 17,000 ethnic and religious minority people to highlight the issues they have faced during the coronavirus pandemic. The Evidence for Equality National Survey (EVENS) will document the impact of Covid-19 lockdowns on people from ethnic and religious minority groups in Britain.
It will ask participants about employment, finance, education, economic wellbeing, health, housing, policing, identity and experiences of discrimination and racism.
The project is led by the Centre on the Dynamics of Ethnicity (CoDE) with researchers from the Universities of Manchester, St Andrews and Sussex, and will run until May 2021. EVENS is being conducted by Ipsos MORI and has been translated into 13 languages.
It aims to transform the policy landscape, inform work and campaigns for racial justice, and create a data legacy by providing robust evidence on a comprehensive range of issues facing ethnic and religious minority people during the pandemic. Dr Laia Becares, Senior Lecturer in Applied Social Science at the University’s School of Education and Social Work, is the project’s main researcher shaping the content of the questionnaire.
The 30-minute survey will target the full range of ethnic and religious minority groups, including Gypsy, Traveller and Roma people and Jewish communities, across England, Scotland and Wales. Several organisations will help to recruit participants, including the Muslim Council of Britain (MCB), Migrants’ Rights Network, and the Race Equality Foundation.
