CCIG/OS lunch seminar 5: Gender and Sexuality Inclusion in Research Design

This seminar is part of our CCIG/OS series. Don’t hesitate to bring your lunch!

This session will be organised by Meg Barker (OU).

In recent years there has been increasing concern over how best to include all gender and sexual identities appropriately in research studies - particularly in the demographic sections of questionnaires, surveys, interview studies and the like. It is very common for researchers to receive negative feedback from participants who feel that the questions excluded their experience.

This is an area in which the terminology is still changing and about which there is much confusion. We tend to ask for gender on surveys as a matter of course, but is it always relevant and legitimate to ask? Should we refer to 'sex' or 'gender'? Should we include categories beyond 'male' and 'female' (given moves in many countries to recognise additional genders on passports)? And how should we best be inclusive of trans people in our gender questions? Similarly, when it comes to sexual identity, orientation, attraction, or practice, what is the best terminology to use? When is this relevant to ask anyway? How should we define identities such as 'bisexual' or 'queer' if we use them? What other categories might we consider including under sexuality, and why? What about the use of scales as opposed to identity labels? And what relationship categories should we include to make sure all main types of sexual relationship are covered in our research?

This workshop attempts to balance the practicalities of quantitative and qualitative research with an ethics of inclusion to cover the kinds of questions that we should be asking ourselves as researchers when designing our studies. It also presents current best practice regarding terminology which encompasses all experiences of gender and sexuality, and some of the pitfalls in recent research which have led to problems.