Creating interactive visualisations with gender identity data: Live code demonstration in Python/R

The Office for Statistics Regulation confirmed on 12 September 2024 that the gender identity estimates from Census 2021 in England and Wales are no longer 'accredited official statistics' and are now classified as 'official statistics in development'.

For further information please see the Office for National Statistics web page Sexual orientation and gender identity quality information for Census 2021.

The most recent census in 2021 asked two novel, voluntary questions on sexuality and gender identity. By learning how to create interactive visualisations with gender identity data, we can improve our coding skills whilst exploring some interesting data along the way.

The way that we communicate our research and findings can have a big impact upon how people understand our data. Static graphs are useful, but interactive graphs allow for a more hands on approach by leveraging features such as interactive legends, tooltips, and dropdown widgets. We will get to grips with these terms in the workshop.

Interactivity can add a lot of value to your research by:

Promoting user engagement with data vs boring, uninspiring graphs.
Allowing for flexible, easy data exploration through built-in functions.
Promoting in-depth data exploration as interactive tools allow us to be more granular and specific in our analysis.
Allowing for multi-faceted analysis, given that we can explore data from multiple perspectives within a single visualisation.

Presenter: Louise Capener