In order to protect privacy and encourage participants to respond honestly, results are only disaggregated when there are 5 or more participants in a given group.
When particular groups are not large enough to disaggregate, we combine them into a “Small Groups” category (see the red arrow on the graph below). For example, if a Class had four African American students, three Latinx students, and three Middle Eastern students, responses from these three groups would be combined into the single Small Groups bar. This protects participants’ privacy while still making sure all groups are represented in the report to the extent possible.
Note that, in some cases, data also are “blurred” or “perturbed” to prevent unintended disclosure.
Even after this process, some groups may not be large enough, in which case their data will be masked.