[Air-L] Gender and surveys

[Umar Ruhi]

Thanks for bringing this up Sky and thanks to everyone else for a very
useful discussion on this important issue.
I have to admit that in the past, I have experimented with several
variations on the gender question including providing the “other” and/or
the “prefer not to say” options. I have also used a text field which
resulted in some rather rowdy data being entered in that field – which
while fun to read through, made us doubt the seriousness of responses on
the rest of the survey.

We took a rather more traditional/conservative approach this time, but I do
like the suggestion about non-binary male/female with prefer not to say.
Will certainly give this more thought for our next survey.

Thanks,

Umar Ruhi
umar.ruhi at uottawa.ca
University of Ottawa