[Air-L] Gender and surveys

Sarah Merry skmerry at gmail.com
Wed Apr 13 03:28:22 PDT 2016


In my PhD three/four years ago I used radio buttons (male / female /
trans*) plus a text box for anyone who felt they could not click one of the
buttons. This was successful, in that some (about 2% IIRC) respondents used
the text box.

Now I mostly just use a text box, or don't ask for gender at all.

Sarah Merry

On 13 April 2016 at 02:43, 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:
> http://www.sarahmei.com/blog/2010/11/26/disalienation/
>
> 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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