Frequently Asked Questions

Everyone is different. When two people come together, there is already diversity.

Diversity can be any attribute that makes us different from one another. Diversity is both attributive and cognitive, and can refer to differences based on cultural heritage, gender, age, language, religion, disability and sexual orientation, and to many more dimensions such as education, occupation, tenure, personality, socioeconomic status, marital or parental status, and so on. The list is almost endless!

We have worked since 2015 to qualify and quantify the metrics that best capture diversity for any organisation. We regularly review and conduct research in order to ensure Atlas captures key diversity, both cultural and demographic. We emphasise cultural diversity, demographic diversity and intersectionality in order to provide nuanced, considered and useful insights in diversity results.

The data is stored in accordance with our privacy policy. Click to read: privacy policy.

Each page of the Atlas survey has an SSL certificate. Our web servers are located in highly secured domains where security is guaranteed. All website data is backed up on a daily, weekly and monthly basis. The integrity and availability of any data on Atlas is our highest priority, and all data is encrypted in transit and at rest. All personal data is protected in line with any or all statutory authorities in any country, state or jurisdiction in which the survey is deployed, including but not limited to GDPR (EU).

We use the UN database of countries and follow the UN’s classification of countries and dependent territories. The criteria for the selection of countries listed in the Atlas can be categorised as:

• A full member of the United Nations
• UN Non-Member Permanent Observer States
• Members of specialised agencies of the UN
• Countries connected to a full member and in the process of being decolonised
• Islands associated with a Full Member State – e.g. Christmas Island and Norfolk Island are part of Australia.
• Non Self-Governing Territories

Or a region/ overseas territory connected to a country which is a full member of the UN such as the following:

• Overseas Territories/Collectivity/Departments/Regions of France
• Overseas Territories/Department of Britain
• Constituent Country
• Unincorporated Territories of the US & Commonwealth
• Constituent State/Country – e.g, Antigua is part of the Kingdom of the Netherlands.
• Associated State

We also list countries that fulfil the following three criteria:

• Recognised by at least two UN full member states.
• Are self-governing
• Have their own official currency, or utilise a currency from a major multilateral movement or a permanent member of the UN Security Council.

The true answer is that we don’t have a set definition and we leave it up to the participant to interpret our query, but we do insist that it relates to one’s perception of reality.

We have received interesting feedback over the years, such as “I believe my football team will win this weekend; is that a belief?” Yes it is, but it is not in the spirit of the question.

“I am a neo-Marxist / conservative / contrarian / doomsdayist ... why is that not included?” Because for us, they and others like it relate to perceptions of sociological and/or socio-economic structures, not one’s perception of reality.

“I am an atheist; it is not a belief, it is the absence of one particular belief, why is it included?” Because we thought it was important.

Previously, we used the term ‘Worldview’ but that caused much confusion, and in 2026 we updated the entry to ‘Beliefs’ in order to encourage greater survey participation and a more simple understanding of our intention.

Typologies of religious hierarchies are complex because they consider a range of social, organisational and belief (spiritual/existential) factors. We use an (up to) three-tiered structure to classify religious groups which allows users to precisely specify their religious affiliation, as the nuance of differing branches of any religious or spiritual movement are often quite pronounced.

At the top of the hierarchy sits the dominant category of what is, in the case of Christian religions for instance, the ‘church’, with sub-categories of each church listed within the database as well, should participants wish to take a ‘deeper dive’.

Note: We also have options such as ‘Self Defined Christian’, ‘Lapsed Christian’ and ‘Non-Religious Buddhist’ in our datasets.

Examples:

• Christian → Catholic → Roman Catholic
• Christian → Orthodox → Greek Orthodox
• Islam → Sunni → Hanafi
• Buddhist → Mahayana → Zen
• Hindu → Vaishnava → Smarta

Your ancestors may have belonged to different cultures to you, but the influence of these cultures may still resonate. For us, we are interested just as much by where you came from as who you are now. The dataset contains almost 11,000 options – some are broad descriptors such as ‘European’ but many are very precise, such as the thousands of tribes and mobs around the world, people groups, ethnic groups and nations.

You can pick up to four.

Likewise, your sense of cultural belonging may differ from your ancestry, or you may have the same answer/s for both questions. You can select up to four cultures / people-groups that describe the culture to which you feel that you belong now.

The database has drawn from a range of sources including Ethnologue, AIATSIS (The Australian Institute of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies), the UN and also many years of ongoing research by various members and partners of Cultural Infusion. An important feature of the databases is the ongoing coding and grouping of data according to zones, relational aspect and, where possible, the flow of communities across the globe.

Some entries such as ‘Black British’ and ‘West German’ came about after feedback from our participants. If any new cultural group is brought to our attention, we ensure research is conducted, citations and references noted, and our panel of SME’s are in agreeance before they are added to our database. This most wonderful act of ‘citizen science’ quite often brings forth real-world cultural identities than western academia has thus far ignored or failed to include.

Our database is an ongoing work, representative of our lifetime commitment to Atlas becoming a repository for all data around languages, speech communities, worldviews/religions, cultural heritage and national identities, which will ultimately help us to understand the human journey to its fullest.

Disability is any self-reported personal, physical, mental or emotional condition that impacts a person’s life long term.  We use the term ‘disability’ rather than other nomenclatures for reasons best expressed by the Australian Network on Disability, who write on their website:

“Differently abled”, “people of all abilities”, “disAbility”, “diffAbled”, “special needs” and the like, are all euphemistic and can be considered patronising. While the intention is usually good, these phrases tend to fall into the trap of making people with disability out to be special or inspirational, just for living with disability.”

We use the term appearance to refer to the grouping of people into broad categories based on differences in physical appearance. We have been asked previously, 'Why not just put "race"?'  The answer to that is that ‘race’ is a conceptually unstable category and the use of this category readily creates distorted information.  That is not to say racism does not exist (it certainly does). Historically, the concept of ‘race’ has been used to establish a social hierarchy and system of power that privileges or advantages certain groups, especially the so-called 'white' race, and unfairly disadvantages other groups, especially the so-called 'black' race. Race can be something that a person identifies with but is often assigned to them by others. People who want to self-identify their 'race' can do so from the culture and ancestry survey options.

'Colourism' is a global issue where perceptions of skin shade can influence social and economic opportunities. Depending on location and social and cultural norms, people may experience advantages or disadvantages based on how their skin shade is perceived. Colorism may be the most prevalent form of racism. Skin shade is a more conceptually stable category than 'race', meaning the data can provide more accurate information about how exclusion and discrimination may be playing out.