Measuring Sexual Identity, Gender Identity, and Biological Sex in Large Social Surveys: Implications for Victimization Research

Abstract

Decades of research suggest certain risk factors, including individual characteristics, increase an individual’s likelihood of being victimized. Measuring these risk factors then becomes crucial for movement forward in victimology. Recent research suggests the increasing need to measure the concepts of sex assigned at birth, gender identity, and sexual identity, all of whom have been linked to risk of victimization. However, it remains to be seen how these concepts are currently being measured, how their measurement has evolved, and if these concepts are being measured regularly, especially in large-scale national data efforts. This study seeks to examine the changes, or lack thereof, in measurement of the concepts of sex, gender identity, and sexual identity in seven major social surveys used in victimology research. Changes to wording, responses, and the number of questions regarding each of these concepts is discussed along with suggestions for improving measurement and implications for victimization research.

Better-than-chance prediction of cooperative behaviour from first and second impressions

“…Our results suggest that these prediction abilities respond to sparse clues, like gender and appearance, available in first and second impressions. As gender identity and photo or video appearance are influential parameters in self-presentation across a variety of human interaction media affecting investment, voting, legal decisions, hiring, mate selection and cooperative interaction (Snyder et al, 2022;Todorov, 2017), our results provide important insight into key hazards and trade-offs involved with revealing or not revealing gender identity and static or dynamic appearance when first or second impressions form and new relationships develop.…”

“…While all our Prisoner's Dilemma players self-identified as either male or female, a small portion of our raters chose to not identify as male or female. Future studies will benefit from inquiry into the alternative gender identities and concepts that are becoming increasingly preferred by survey respondents and might better reveal gender influences if carefully measured (Snyder et al, 2022 ).…”