Inclusive Research Guidelines

One of the many hats I now wear is secretary of the LGBT+ Staff and Postgraduate Student Network at the University of Aberdeen and as part of this role I have been gathering feedback from students and staff as to how we can be inclusive re: gender and sexual orientation. One of the issues raised was a lack of consistency regarding the language and options provided when researchers are collecting demographic and personal information.

In consultation with the Scottish Transgender Alliance we have created a set of guidelines to help researchers ensure that all participants are able to accurately report their gender identity and sexual orientation. Whilst writing these guidelines I discovered potential pitfalls I never knew existed (problematic hyphens!) so I thought I'd post them here in the hope that this may help others needing the same clarity (you can download the original file here.

Gender

Most psychological research requests that participants provide their gender and it is important that all participants are able to express their true gender identity. Both forced-choice and open-ended questions can be used to collect gender identity. For forced-choice the following format is recommended:

Please select which of the following options you currently identify as:

Woman, including trans woman

Man, including trans man

Other (please specify)

Prefer not to say

The addition of including trans woman/man is to ensure that it is explicit to transgender participants that trans women and trans men are considered women and men. If the forced-choice options are simply female, male, other, it may not be clear to transgender participants whether the researcher considers that they should tick the other option. The other option is there to allow non-binary participants to state their preferred gender identity (e.g., non-binary, gender-fluid etc.). Please note that there should be a space between trans and woman/man and no hyphen.

Most ethical guidelines (for example, the British Psychological Society) state that participants should not be forced to answer any question and therefore a participant may choose not to provide an answer to the gender question. However, this does leave ambiguity as to whether the participant chose not to answer or may have simply overlooked the question. The addition of the ‘prefer not to say’ allows participants to communicate to the researcher explicitly that they do not wish to provide this information.

The open-ended recommendation is as follows:

Please state the gender, if any, that you currently identify as.

The wording of this questions allows all participants the opportunity to express their gender identity in their own language and explicitly acknowledges that some participants may not identify as any gender.

If for the purposes of your research it is important to determine whether participants are transgender then a second question should be asked:

Is your current gender identity the same as the one you were assigned at birth? (yes/no/prefer not to say)

As a reminder, sex is biologically determined and can be male, female, or intersex, whilst gender is a social construct and people can choose which gender they identify as, if any. If your study is investigating sex and/or gender differences, you may wish to include information regarding whether the data from non-binary participants will be included in the analyses.

Sexual orientation

As with gender identity, both forced-choice and open-ended questions can be used to collect information on sexual orientation. For forced-choice the following format is recommended:

Please select which of the following options you currently identify as:

          Heterosexual

            Lesbian

            Gay

            Bisexual

            Other (please specify)

            Prefer not to say

It is important to note that whilst gender identity and sexual orientation are often referred to under the same banner (i.e., LGBT+ organisations), being transgender is not a sexual orientation and should never be included as an option in a question about sexual orientation.

The open-ended recommendation is as follows:

Please state the sexual orientation, if any, that you currently identify as. 

The experience of writing these guidelines has changed my practice. From now on, unless I have very good reason to do so (i.e., if I'm expecting an extremely large sample) I will use open-ended gender and sexual orientation options. Yes, it requires a bit of extra work after data collection is finished but it removes any potential pitfalls and is largely future-proof against changes in terminology. It's also worth noting that these guidelines are guidelines and there can always be room for some flexibility. If your sample is targeting the general population then the above fixed-choice categories are likely suitable. If you are specifically targeting the LGBT+ community then you may want to provide separate options for asexual, agender, pansexual etc. (although again, going open-ended prevents even having to consider this).

If you have any comments or suggestions about these guidelines please get in touch, either in the comments section, on twitter, or drop me an e-mail.

Edit (6/7/17): After posting this on Twitter it was suggested that including info about how to ask about children and parents in a way that inclusive of e.g., same-sex parents would also be helpful. I haven't done this yet so any suggestions or examples of wording would be great!