[Air-L] Seeking Best Practices in Asking Gender Identity

[Tiffani St.Cloud]

Hello,

The association where I work added sexual orientation and gender identity
questions to our surveys three years ago (we survey graduate students in
the US and Canada). While the sexual orientation question is working quite
well, we are not satisfied with the reliability of the information we get
from the gender identity question. We get a great many people writing in
comments which makes it difficult to report reliable rates of transgender
individuals. This is the item we currently use, which is based upon the
Williams Institute recommendations.

How do you self-identify?
o Female
o Male
o Transgender female-to-male
o Transgender male-to-female
o Transgender do not identify as exclusively male or female
o I self-identify as: _________________

A great many of our researchers have noted issues with this question so we
have decided to convene a workgroup to look at the current best practices
in asking gender identity and to decide upon the best way to ask this
question (i.e. keep, modify, completely revise).


If you are aware of any best practice documents on asking gender identity,
or have developed items you feel might be more appropriate, I would greatly
appreciate receiving that information. You can email me directly at:
tstcloud at gmail.com.


Thank you in advance for your consideration.


Tiffani