New Categories Are Not Enough

Abstract

Grand Valley state university, usa aLiya saperstein stanford university, usa recently, scholars and activists have turned their attention toward improving the measurement of sex and gender in survey research. the focus of this effort has been on including answer options beyond "male" and "female" to questions about the respondent's gender. this is an important step toward both reflecting the diversity of gendered lives and better aligning survey measurement practice with contemporary gender theory. However, our systematic examination of questionnaires, manuals, and other technical materials from four of the largest and longest-running surveys in the united states indicates that there are a number of other issues with how gender is conceptualized and measured in social surveys that also deserve attention, including essentialist practices that treat sex and gender as synonymous, easily determined by others, obvious, and unchanging over the life course. We find that these understandings extend well beyond direct questions about the respondent's gender, permeating the surveys. a hyper-gendered world of "males" and "females," "brothers" and "sisters," and "husbands" and "wives" shapes what we can see in survey data. if not altered, surveys will continue to reproduce statistical representations that erase important dimensions of variation and likely limit understanding of the processes that perpetuate social inequality.

Health Disparities in Nonreligious and Religious Older Adults in the United States: A Descriptive Epidemiology of 16 Common Chronic Conditions

“…For example, people transitioning between sexes, intersex, transgender of any type, gender nonbinary, same sex attracted, bisexual, asexual, and nonsexual people are often not represented in such surveys and they are not in the data set used for this report (see, for example, Ivankovich et al 2013;Wentling et al 2008;Westbrook & Saperestein 2015). Although people with these characteristics may be included in the total participant pool (Westbrook & Saperstein 2015), we cannot comment meaningfully on their experiences at present using this dataset. As calls continue for more truly representative data, it may thus be useful to re-estimate prevalence rates including these and other often unrepresented populations to gain a better picture of overall population health (Ivankovich et al 2013).…”

“…Certain groups within the study population (African Americans, Latinos, men, and persons 75 to 85 years of age) are oversampled to boost statistical power (Waite et al 2007). Several key demographic groups are also not captured explicitly; we comment on this in our discussion of study limitations (for limitations of cisgender samples also see Westbrook & Saperstein 2015).…”

“…While gender is often significantly related to chronic and other health experience (see Nowakowski & Sumerau 2015), the NSHAP -like most other "representative" surveys -currently has no measure of gender, but rather only collects cissex (i.e., female/male) responses from subjects (see also Westbrook & Saperstein 2015). The NSHAP dataset includes 3,005 individual cases in total.…”

“…First, as with any current data set called "nationally representative," several key demographic groups (especially in relation to health) are not captured explicitly Westbrook & Saperstein 2015). For example, people transitioning between sexes, intersex, transgender of any type, gender nonbinary, same sex attracted, bisexual, asexual, and nonsexual people are often not represented in such surveys and they are not in the data set used for this report (see, for example, Ivankovich et al 2013;Wentling et al 2008;Westbrook & Saperestein 2015).…”

No One Expects a Transgender Jew: Religious, Sexual and Gendered Intersections in the Evaluation of Religious and Nonreligious Others

“…As we have demonstrated elsewhere (see, e.g., Sumerau et al 2016a), however, there is currently no way to explore sexual and gender intersections in mainstream (or nationally representative) quantitative data sets because such samples only measure cisgender options and almost never include sexual minority components (see also Ikanovich et al 2013;Westbrook & Saperstein 2015). As a result, we utilize a convenience sample in combination with a survey of our own design for the purposes of exploring such phenomena and illustrating intersectional nuances that may be missed by traditional quantitative data sets.…”