Blog
Inclusive insight: changing how BHF collects diversity data
Our aim is to support a diverse and inclusive research environment to help us achieve our vision of a world free from the fear of heart and circulatory disease. To help us understand how we can move towards becoming a more inclusive research funder, we will soon start asking for more diversity information from our research community.
Funding the best people from the widest possible pool of talent is essential to ensure we fund the most talented researchers to help save and improve lives affected by cardiovascular disease.
In our Equality, Diversity and Inclusion (EDI) strategy Igniting Change, launched in 2022, we outlined clear commitments to addressing inequalities within the research ecosystem, ensuring that BHF plays its part in creating a diverse and inclusive research environment.
Since April 2020, we have been capturing information about legally protected characteristics, including age, disability, ethnicity and gender of researchers applying for funding.
These data form an anonymised and confidential statistical record, allowing us to perform further analysis and comparison with sector wide information. The aggregated analysis of these data has been published in July 2023 in our first research funding diversity report. The report provided valuable insight that is helping us shape our future actions to address under-representation in our research community.
But we are aware of the limitations of our current data capture. It is known that under-representation or inequalities exist in the Science, Technology, Engineering, Maths and Medicine (STEMM) sector in the UK for other legally protected characteristics.
- Gender reassignment and sexual-orientation: A UK report about the experience of LGBTQ+ people in STEM has shown that LGBTQ+ researchers have considered leaving their workplace because of discrimination towards them; and another describes the barriers LGBTQ+ people face in research funding processes. However, there are no detailed data which examine how the operation of UK funding systems impacts LGBTQ+ scientists, despite evidence that the LGBTQ+ community is keen to engage with such data gathering.
- Religious beliefs: perceptions of religious discriminations amongst scientists have been described in the UK, although the scarcity of data being collected by funders makes it challenging to further look into. A report published in 2018 by the Equality Challenge Unit revealed that there is only patchy data-gathering for religious beliefs, despite the fact that individuals feel generally comfortable sharing such information.
Other personal characteristics have also been associated with inequalities and under-representation.
- Balancing work and caring responsibilities has been identified as challenge faced by many employees and most commonly women, including in STEMM careers. The BHF seeks to understand how caring responsibilities (of all type) impact representation and inclusivity in its cardiovascular research community.
- Socio-economic background: while it is known that the current state of the talent pipeline in the UK sees only 12% of STEM undergraduates and 7% of STEM research students coming from the least advantaged quintile in terms of socioeconomic background, there is very little analysis available on the impact of socioeconomic background in obtaining research funding.
That is why from March 2024 researchers applying for funding will be asked to complete new questions about these characteristics to form an anonymised and confidential statistical record. We have followed sector-wide best practice guidelines (DAISY guidance, Advance HE, ONS Census) when designing the questions that will help us capture this information.
We are mindful that some of these questions might seem intrusive, which is why researchers can always select ‘Prefer not to say’ to any of these questions. However, the more information researchers share with us, the better we can assess inclusivity in how our research funding decisions are made and allow us to identify under-representation across different groups. This allows us to focus on barriers and plan targeted interventions to remove these, so that we can achieve a more representative and inclusive heart and circulatory disease research community.
For more information about the upcoming changes, please have a look at our FAQs or please email us at [email protected].