data quality – Page 2

Pay Gaps #17 – How to Spot an Incorrect Median Gender Pay Gap

August 11, 2020 By Nigel Marriott

I have a spotted an incorrect median gender pay gap published by a well known name in a certain industry. They shall remain nameless for now since I am trying to get them to accept their error and publish a new gender pay gap report on their website. I know they have made an error because their published data violates the laws of mathematics as I will explain in this blog. All it takes to spot such an error is a simple calculation you can do in your head and an understanding what the median measures.

Pay Gap Trends #3 – Did the UK gender pay gap narrow in 2019?

June 14, 2020 By Nigel Marriott

On 24th March 2020, the UK government suspended enforcement of the gender pay gap reporting deadline of 5th April. As of today, just over 50% of employers have reported their 2019 gender pay gap figures. Despite this shortfall, I have used statistical imputation methods to calculate that the median gender pay gap narrowed in 2019 from 9.6 pence in the pound to 9.0-9.2 pence in the pound.

Pay Gap Data #3 – Where can I find gender pay gap data for 2019?

June 2, 2020 By Nigel Marriott

This post was updated on 3rd June 2020 with the latest data

Update 5/4/20 – On 24th March, the government suspended enforcement of the deadline for reporting 2019 gender pay gaps due to the coronavirus outbreak. As of now, Only 40% of employers have reported their 2019 data. Employers are still required to report 2019 data but will not be punished for being late in doing so.

The government requires all organisations employing 250 or more employees to submit gender pay gap data. All data is available to the public and can be found on the government’s gender pay gap website. I have downloaded this data and created a spreadsheet tool to present the data in a more user-friendly and visual format.

Coronavirus #1 – Useful Data and Links

May 14, 2020 By Nigel Marriott

Updated on 14th May 2020. New and modified links are italicised.

The Coronavirus Pandemic is a worldwide challenge many of us will have not experienced before. It is natural to want to seek information on the risks and in our world today, it has never been easier to find data, analyses and opinions. Unfortunately, a lot of what you will read out there is either unhelpful or actively misleading. As an independent statistician with 30 years experience of explaining statistics to non-statisticians, my contribution to this crisis will be to try and sort the good from the bad hence this post. [Read more…] about Coronavirus #1 – Useful Data and Links

Coronavirus #3 – How many people have died of COVID19 in the UK?

April 24, 2020 By Nigel Marriott

The Financial Times (FT) has estimated the true number of COVID19 related deaths in the UK as of 20th April 2020 is 42,000 not 17,000 as published by the Department of Health & Social Care (DHSC). In this article, I show that the FT headline is incorrect and is the result of either the FT comparing apples with pears due to a misunderstanding over what the various data sets measure or the FT attempting to estimate a number that can never be verified.

Pay Gaps #13 – How could Ethnicity Pay Gap Reporting be introduced in the UK?

February 11, 2020 By Nigel Marriott

On 5th February 2020, Baroness Prosser laid a bill in the House of Lords which calls for the introduction of ethnicity pay gap reporting in addition to a number of other initiatives. Last year I explained why ethnicity pay gap reporting cannot follow the same process as gender pay gap reporting so now is the time to explore how ethnicity pay gap reporting could be carried out.

Pay Gaps #11 – A median sized problem with 10 solutions from the RSS

August 7, 2019 By Nigel Marriott

The Royal Statistical Society (RSS) and I have published two articles to help employers better calculate and interpret their gender pay gaps. The first article lists 10 recommendations to improve the quality of gender pay gap reporting, the second is an article in Significance magazine which explores in more detail, two of the recommendations concerning medians and quartiles.

Pay Gaps #10 – Should the UK introduce Ethnicity Pay Gap Reporting?

July 18, 2019 By Nigel Marriott

After two years of mandatory gender pay gap reporting, there is increasing pressure to bring in pay gap reporting for other protected characteristics. At the moment, ethnicity is receiving the greatest attention and a number of politicians are calling for the introduction of mandatory ethnicity pay gap reporting.

In this post, I will explain why I am opposed to an ethnicity pay gap reporting process which simply replicates the gender pay gap reporting process. In a future post, I will explore what an ethnicity pay gap reporting process should look like if parliament decides it wants to make this law.

Stats Training Materials – Sampling & Surveys

July 17, 2019 By Nigel Marriott

The core expertise that Statisticians offer to the world is drawing conclusions from small samples. Therefore, knowing how to design surveys, estimate the right sample size, decide on the right way to ask the question or measure a property are all essential skills for any statistical thinker. The skills you need to be competent in Sampling & Surveys are best captured by my Survey Wheel.

Pay Gaps #3 – 12 ways to improve public confidence in gender pay gap data

June 27, 2018 By Nigel Marriott

This is intended to be a briefing note for anyone interested in seeing gender pay gap data being used properly. Gender pay gap data is now part is the business and political discourse in the UK and is likely to be so for some time. If the goal of gender pay gap reporting is to remove disparities in pay between men and women, then it is essential that the public has confidence in both the quality of the data being published and the correctness of any interpretations of the results. With the first round of data reporting out of the way, it is time to learn lessons, identify improvements and see that these are implemented. Following extensive analysis of the 2017 round of results, I have identified 12 ways to improve the quality of the data being reported and make interpretations of the results more meaningful.
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