[Air-L] Gender and surveys

Wed Apr 13 08:22:28 PDT 2016

A text box is always ideal, but the elephant in this thread is the extent to which quantitative coding shapes question formats, especially when surveys are distributed online. Text boxes require manual coding, which is avoided by using binary data including Male/Female and/or more expanded categories that can also be turned into numeric data (I.e., Female 1, Male 2, Trans*3 etc.). That is, properly asking about gender requires a lot more work. The question of best practices in surveying gender is fundamentally a question of how to acquiesce to, or circumvent, the limitations of survey methodology, and the work researchers are willing and able to devote to data analysis. 

Jenny

Jenny L. Davis
Assistant Professor of Sociology
James Madison University
Co-Editor: Cyborgology.org
Twitter: @Jenny_L_Davis

________________________________________
From: Air-L [air-l-bounces at listserv.aoir.org] on behalf of Rachelle Annechino [joralemonshelly at gmail.com]
Sent: Wednesday, April 13, 2016 11:07 AM
To: sky c
Cc: Air-L at listserv.aoir.org
Subject: Re: [Air-L] Gender and surveys

Been looking into this recently too. I found the examples in this
report esp. helpful:

Herman, J.L., ed. Best Practices for Asking Questions to Identify
Transgender and Other Gender Minority Respondents on Population-Based
Surveys. Los Angeles, CA: The Williams Institute, 2014.

The two below also have examples + have some interesting discussion on
coming to agreement (or not) on these kinds of questions:

Alper, Joe, Monica N. Feit, and Jon Q. Sanders. “Collecting Sexual
Orientation and Gender Identity Data in Electronic Health Records,”
2013.

Harrison, Jack, Jaime Grant, and Jody L. Herman. “A Gender Not Listed
Here: Genderqueers, Gender Rebels, and Otherwise in the National
Transgender Discrimination Survey.” LGBTQ Public Policy Journal at the
Harvard Kennedy School 2, no. 1 (2012).

And then this one is a little more 'Blow it all up!', plus talks about
how gender comes into other kinds of survey questions:

Westbrook, Laurel, and Aliya Saperstein. “New Categories Are Not
Enough Rethinking the Measurement of Sex and Gender in Social
Surveys.” Gender & Society 29, no. 4 (August 1, 2015): 534–60.
doi:10.1177/0891243215584758.

Thanks for asking this question, will be interesting to see what turns up!

--
Rachelle Annechino

On Tue, Apr 12, 2016 at 6:43 PM, sky c <skyc at riseup.net> wrote:
> I seem to be sending a similar email quite often lately, so I thought it
> might be worth sending out a version to the list more generally.
>
> Many of the surveys I see sent out over this list still include a
> 'gender' option that offers users the choice of only 'male' or 'female'.
> If you're developing a survey to send out, it might be worth
> considering:
> * Whether gender is relevant to your research question/topic? (If not,
> you may consider leaving out a question about gender)
> * Offering more options for gender. Gender is complex, and many people
> don't identify as either male or female. Offering an option for a text
> field is a useful way to allow people to answer the question honestly:
> https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v2/url?u=http-3A__www.sarahmei.com_blog_2010_11_26_disalienation_&d=BQIGaQ&c=eLbWYnpnzycBCgmb7vCI4uqNEB9RSjOdn_5nBEmmeq0&r=iLWI-3F9xeUYlZlWLgCzJA&m=snT1l-YcgL8WdW7j8bMH8y4KLgtPygETgr4nx7Ou4pU&s=UzjQETbMLCoLn8qUHyxxVJyqsvzBSNXs6iqILHk8eUQ&e=
>
> I'm also curious how people who are already addressing the gender
> spectrum in research surveys are approaching this: do you use a text
> field, 'male'/'female'/'other', or something else?
>
> Thanks,
> sky.
>
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--
Rachelle Annechino
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