Institutional Research uses the State's methodology for combining ethnicity and race into one demographic factor.
First, the application asks about Ethnicity, prompting students to identify if they are Hispanic/Latina/e/o/x or not. Second, the application asks about Race, prompting students to select all races they identify with: American Indian/AK Native, Asian, Black or African American, Hawaiian/Pacific Islander, and/or White.
If a student identifies as Hispanic/Latina/e/o/x, regardless of any races they select, they are reported only as Hispanic. If a non-Hispanic student selects multiple races, they are reporting as Multiracial. If the student did not provide their race, they are reported as Unknown. Otherwise, students are reported as the single race they selected.
In some reports. due to space constraints or to low numbers of students in various categories (to protect confidentiality), racial/ethnic categories are combined. This typically results in one of the following groupings, depending on the trends in the data:
- White, Students of Color, Unknown
- White, Hispanic, Other/Remaining Students of Color, Unknown
- White, Hispanic and/or Asian, Other/Remaining Students of Color, Unknown
Note. The Federal Government is in the process of updating federal reporting requirements such that a new racial category will be added - Middle Eastern and Northern African (MENA) - and Race and Ethnicity will be combined into a single question, rather than asking separately. Currently, those who identify as MENA are classified as "White".