Over the past few years, we have seen the emergence of the topic of gender inclusivity in the public sphere: countries like Canada and Australia, for example, now give the option for their citizen to choose a neutral gender option in their identification papers. Due to the universality of such a topic, it has touched all areas of societies and all industries, including the market, social and opinion research industry. The reoccurring question, as addressed in this article by Kathy Frankovic on Research World is “should we, and if yes how, include a broader gender spectrum in our studies?”. Studies have also been done on the occurrence of people who don’t identify as one gender or the other (see Research World print May/June 2018).
ESOMAR has not issued a guideline on this, though some national associations have. This resulted in questions from market researchers on how to address gender in surveys. To shed some light on the question: it was concluded that since the legal developments seem to point in the direction of more inclusive language, there would be no legal issue with adding a “other” category under “gender”. However, it is important to keep in mind that the agency conducting this kind of research could, in some jurisdictions, be considered to be processing sensitive personal data, and should naturally take appropriate measures for legal compliance in this regard.
The matter was further discussed with ESOMAR’s Professional Standards Committee (PSC). The Committee came to the conclusion that, although it is legally possible to add an “other”, “don’t know” or “don’t want to say” answer to the question of “gender” in a survey, it would be difficult to weigh the “other” category as , at the moment, there is no census information (or consensus, for that matter) on how many people identify as non-binary. So as long as no census information is available, the PSC recommends to not put weight to this category.
This would make it difficult to actually use these responses in research. On the other hand, research has shown that actually only a few people would select the other category, so it would not have a large impact on the study as a whole. You may want to keep in mind the possibility to re-identify these individuals and may need to take extra measures to prevent re-identification. It is up to each research organization to decide for themselves, and for each project, which gender category or categories are appropriate to include.
One thing is for sure: the debate on gender inclusion is far from over and the social, opinion and social research industry can expect more developments that will impact and shape how tomorrow’s studies are conducted.
