Gender (mis)measurement: Guidelines for respecting gender diversity in psychological research

Abstract

Empirical evidence affirms that gender is a nonbinary spectrum. Yet our review of recently published empirical articles reveals that demographic gender measurement in psychology still assumes that gender comprises just two categories: women and men. This common practice is problematic. It fails to represent psychologists' current understanding of gender, violates our ethical principles as scientists, and can result in gender misclassification. Psychologists' reliance on binary measures also conveys an exclusionary attitude that is contrary to recent ethical recommendations and contrary to the growing public concern about transgender rights. We extend five simple, no-cost recommendations that begin to resolve these ethical and methodological problems: use and report, nonbinary gender measures; report the prevalence of nonbinary participants; clarify their inclusion and treatment in analysis; and use gender inclusive language. We also address common concerns expressed by researchers, including whether measuring "sex" resolves the issue and whether gender-inclusive measures confuse or offend participants.

Gender, face mask perceptions, and face mask wearing: Are men being dangerous during the COVID-19 pandemic?

“…Lastly, future researchers should also replicate the current results by addressing our limitations. We considered gender a dichotomy, but gender exists on a spectrum ( Cameron & Stinson, 2019 ). Future research should assess gender using a continuous format.…”

Gender inequalities during COVID-19

“…The time may be ripe for challenging binary conceptualizations of gender and gender roles, especially those responsible for maintaining gender inequalities in care work and domestic labour. Encouragingly, social psychologists are already leading the charge in reconceptualizing theories of gender beyond the binary (e.g., Hyde et al, 2019; Morgenroth & Ryan, 2020), as well as developing more inclusive ways of measuring sex/gender (Bauer et al, 2017; Cameron & Stinson, 2019; Tate et al, 2013).…”

“…Moreover, only 37% of the COVID-19 cases reported to the World Health Organization (WHO) were disaggregated by sex/gender (Azcona et al, 2020), the majority of which reflected binary conceptualizations. Social psychological research is not immune to the erasure of nonbinary gender identities (Cameron & Stinson, 2019). There have been few, if any, empirical examinations of the experiences of individuals from minoritized gender and sexuality groups during COVID-19 published in mainstream social psychological journals.…”

Instructional Communities of Practice during COVID-19: Social Networks and Their Implications for Resilience†

“…To collect gender demographics, participants responded to an open response question. Gender is not a binary construct, and measuring it as a binary option is exclusionary and invalidates the experiences of nonbinary research participants ( 21 , 22 ). The number of nonbinary responses in the survey was small (fewer than three).…”