This field records the sex of the member of staff.

All staff

Guidance question: What is your sex?

Staff should be presented with this question every year. This question is vital for equality monitoring in Higher Education. The SEXID field records the sex of the data subject. Respondents considering how to answer should use the sex recorded on one of their legal documents such as birth certificate, Gender Recognition Certificate or passport. If there is any conflict, the newest document should be referenced.

Providers are not expected to verify the sex of every staff member, although they must make reasonable efforts to ensure that in aggregate the data for the provider is accurate.

"Other": this code should only be used only for a third sex that is legally recognised by another country - this will recognise the scenarios where, for example, an international staff member has a legal sex other than male or female. Please note that HESA will not be restricting use of this code to specific nationalities.

"Information refused": this code should be used where the data subject explicitly states that they do not want to provide the information. As data on sex is fundamental to use of the data it is expected that the "information refused" option is not presented to the data subject by default.

"Not available": this code should be used in cases where it is not possible to supply the information (such as a cyber-attack). This option should not be presented to data subjects.

This question should be asked alongside the Gender Identity or Transgender questions.

Data protection considerations behind the design of this field can be found here.

Advance HE has a number of resources relating to gathering information across the protected characteristics covered by the Equality Act 2010. If you have any further queries regarding equality monitoring, please view https://www.advance-he.ac.uk/.