Evaluating gender/sex measures for inclusion of non-binary participants
Date
2024
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Abstract
With the amount of research on Transgender, Non-Binary, and Gender Expansive communities growing, there has been increasing attention paid to the methods used to collect and analyze gender/sex data from participants. Across fields, multiple methods of collecting gender/sex data have been used, but recently a large portion of the literature has highlighted the Two-Step Method (Tate et al., 2013; NASEM, 2022) as a current best practice. However, the Two-Step Method is not without flaws, notably the disagreement on inclusion of categories outside of man, woman, and transgender which may limit the extent to which Non-Binary participants feel included and represented by this approach. This study asked Non-Binary participants to respond to three different survey instruments used for gender/sex data collection and then asked to rate how well they understood the question(s) and if they felt included by the questions. Additionally, participants rated the accuracy of the category each measure assigned them to their own lived experience. Results found that all measures were comprehensible and inclusive, but that measures explicitly including Non-Binary as a category were more accurate to participants. Implications for these results in the inclusion of Non-Binary communities in research are discussed.
Description
Rights Access
Subject
LGBTQ
non-binary
gender identity
transgender
measurement