Research carried out for Ofcom, the UK broadcasting regulator, to establish how the public actually feels about particular words — so that broadcasters have something better than instinct to work from when deciding what may be said, and when.
The 2021 study asked 368 people about 186 words over five days, alongside 37 discussion groups and 25 interviews. Each word was placed in a band — mild, moderate, strong — according to how much offence it was found to cause and how much context a broadcaster would need before using it. Beyond individual words it also looked at blackface, mimicked accents, misgendering and deadnaming.
It is the closest thing this site has to a peer. Where most sources are lists of words somebody decided were unacceptable, this one asked the public and reported the spread of their answers — the same exercise carried out here, on a larger sample and with a narrower question.
Where it comes from
Conducted by Ipsos MORI for Ofcom and published in 2021. Ofcom’s summary sits at ofcom.org.uk, with the full findings and the quick reference guide for broadcasters published as separate documents.
Only part of that word list has been brought across so far. Ofcom’s own bands are not carried over as scores: a rating here means what visitors to this site decided, and importing somebody else’s figure would quietly turn this into a copy of their research rather than a record of what our own readers think.