Why It Matters

A new Congressional Research Service report identifies implementation timing and Congress's legislative and oversight role as potential considerations in adding a new Middle Eastern or North African category to federal data standards. The Office of Management and Budget released revisions to Statistical Policy Directive No. 15 on March 29, 2024, and the revised standards took effect on March 28, 2024. The revised standards use one combined question to collect race and ethnicity information, add Middle Eastern or North African as a new response category, require detailed race and ethnicity categories to be collected by default, and update certain terminology within categories. SPD No. 15 is intended to promote comparability of race and ethnicity data across federal datasets, and relevant agencies are required to submit an action plan to OMB by March 28, 2027.

Relevant agencies must meet the revised standards by March 28, 2029.

The Big Picture

The 1977 version of SPD No. 15 established the racial categories American Indian or Alaskan Native, Asian or Pacific Islander, Black, and White. That earlier framework also established the ethnic categories Hispanic origin and Not of Hispanic origin.

A 1997 revision separated Asian or Pacific Islander into Asian and Native Hawaiian or Other Pacific Islander, while emphasizing self-identification except when observer identification was more practical. The 2022 interagency working group included representatives from 13 principal statistical agencies, 24 agencies covered by the Chief Financial Officers Act of 1990, and one additional agency.

The 2024 revisions followed research and consultation processes that included an interagency working group and public comments. A 2012 Census Bureau Alternative Questionnaire Experiment found that more people were likely to respond to a combined Hispanic-origin-and-race question than to separate questions.

The Bottom Line

The report identifies implementation timing, effects on federal agencies that use the data, and Congress's legislative and oversight role as potential considerations.

The Census Bureau published a proposed rule on September 10 that would prohibit questions about race and ethnicity on the decennial census short-form questionnaire or any other questionnaire used for population enumeration. That proposal would not apply to other Census surveys, creating a distinction between population enumeration instruments and the bureau’s other survey work.

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