The instability of ethnicity measured in the national census is found to have doubled from the period 1991-2001 to the period 2001-2011, using the Longitudinal Study that links a sample of individuals' census records across time. From internal evidence and comparison with results from the Census Quality Survey and the Labour Force Survey, estimates are made of instability due to changing question wording, imputation of missing answers, proxy reporting, recording errors and changes in the allocation of write-in answers. Of the remaining instability, durable changes of ethnicity by individuals are thought to be considerably less common than changes due to a person's sense of identity not closely fitting the categories offered in the census question. The instability creates a net change in size of some ethnic groups that is usually small compared with the change in population between censuses from births, deaths and migration. Consequences for analysis of census aggregate and microdata are explored.

中文翻译：

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2001-2011年英格兰和威尔士族裔认同的稳定性。

使用纵向研究将跨时期的个人人口普查记录链接起来，发现在全国人口普查中衡量的种族不稳定性从1991-2001年到2001-2011年期间翻了一番。根据内部证据并与人口普查质量调查和劳动力调查的结果进行比较，可以估算出由于问题措词的更改，估算结果的缺失，代理报告，记录错误以及写入答案分配的变化而导致的不稳定。在剩下的不稳定因素中，由于个人的认同感与人口普查问题所提供的类别不完全相符，因此人们认为，种族的持久变化远不如种族变化普遍。与出生，死亡和移民普查之间的人口变化相比，这种不稳定性造成了某些种族群体的净变化，通常很小。探索了人口普查汇总和微观数据分析的结果。