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Original poster

Oxford University covid research

58 replies

Scrabble · 13/10/2022 20:07

So I've spent maybe a couple of years filling in occasional questionnaires from Oxford University. Fairly long ones. About how I and my family are affected by Covid. A lot of the questions are pretty intrusive - eg asking about feelings of depression and worthlessness, whether your children are unpopular or liars and thieves, relationship and money questions, etc. I've done this (despite often not wanting to) over and over again in the interests of research. With some faith that as carried out by prestigious Oxford University they might find out something useful and make good use of it.
Received yet another questionnaire the other day, and this time they required me to tell them what my gender is. The choice was: male / female / other / prefer not to say. There was no sex question. I know that on this board male and female are supposed to relate to sex, but here they were expressly stated to be genders.
I considered not answering the questionnaire, but in the end went for female. But surely sex is very important in the context of Covid and families? And they were clearly conflating sex and gender. I feel as though the whole thing has been a waste of time, and as though I've been cheated into thinking that these were reasonable, academic people with an interest in finding out the truth. So much for fucking Oxford.

OP posts:
Allthegoodnamesarechosen · 14/10/2022 13:02

‘Other’ 😂😂😂

I’d be inclined to write back and ask them where they discovered the ‘other’ and what it is.

Dickheads. I used to be proud of having been educated at Oxford.

Original poster
Scrabble · 14/10/2022 13:01

donquixotedelamancha · 14/10/2022 09:00

In fairness, gender is still used as a synonym for sex by a very large part of the population. It may still be the major usage.

10 years ago there was no need for this linguistic precision because context did that. If you are unaffected by the drive to confuse the two it's not surprising you would still use the old meaning.

They may also know the difference and have decided that the tiny number who will put the wrong sex on a medical questionnaire will make little difference to the data and ease of language matters more than absolute precision.

No, it's not that. They give people the choice between "male", "female" and "other". They are very clearly pandering to gender ideology, and very deliberately inviting people to send in inaccurate data on the question of sex (as they only ask about gender in the gender ideology sense of the word). I think this is unforgivable in the context of research, particularly as sex clearly plays an important part in this area of research.

OP posts:
Original poster
Scrabble · 14/10/2022 12:58

FernlovingNodosaur · 14/10/2022 08:17

Scrabble. Please just ask yourself this simple question?

If The Sun and it's ilk newspaper had requested that you answer the exact same probing personal very questionable questionnaires would you have done it? I am guessing no, not in a million years, right? So please don't fall into the trap that because something is considered prestigious, it automatically equates it to being good, beyond reproach. Prestigious often means generational money and societal privilege and entitlement, and keeping the status quo of those that have it.

I would just add that universities now and oddly it often those considered the best, Oxford Cambridge etc. Appear to no longer be seats of learning but simply indoctrination centres of those than run/fund them. So all your personal effects in completing all those questionnaires may well have even been a pointless task or worst the information used to push those who control places like Cambridge's own questionable personal agenda's.

This is a research project, on the effects of Covid, with a view to learning from the Covid pandemic - with that information then being useful if we have another pandemic in the future. That's my understanding anyway. I obviously expect that kind of research to be carried out by trained researchers (in this case psychologists), not by a newspaper (whether the Sun or The Times). If we write off all research because it's carried out by "the elites" we'll be in even worse trouble than we are in now.

OP posts:
donquixotedelamancha · 14/10/2022 09:00

In fairness, gender is still used as a synonym for sex by a very large part of the population. It may still be the major usage.

10 years ago there was no need for this linguistic precision because context did that. If you are unaffected by the drive to confuse the two it's not surprising you would still use the old meaning.

They may also know the difference and have decided that the tiny number who will put the wrong sex on a medical questionnaire will make little difference to the data and ease of language matters more than absolute precision.

FernlovingNodosaur · 14/10/2022 08:17

Scrabble. Please just ask yourself this simple question?

If The Sun and it's ilk newspaper had requested that you answer the exact same probing personal very questionable questionnaires would you have done it? I am guessing no, not in a million years, right? So please don't fall into the trap that because something is considered prestigious, it automatically equates it to being good, beyond reproach. Prestigious often means generational money and societal privilege and entitlement, and keeping the status quo of those that have it.

I would just add that universities now and oddly it often those considered the best, Oxford Cambridge etc. Appear to no longer be seats of learning but simply indoctrination centres of those than run/fund them. So all your personal effects in completing all those questionnaires may well have even been a pointless task or worst the information used to push those who control places like Cambridge's own questionable personal agenda's.

Terftrain · 13/10/2022 21:23

I feel as though the whole thing has been a waste of time,

i think you’ve nailed it here, also I’d be fairly dubious of any study about covid. Who is funding it?

Fantina · 13/10/2022 21:17

Official medical consent forms I get for the DC (flu jabs etc) all ask about gender rather than sex, nowhere seems to be unaffected.

pattihews · 13/10/2022 21:11

Yes, you're right. Can you contact them and point out their mistake — that male and female are the two sexes and nothing to do with gender, and anyway what do they mean by gender? Can you check to see who's running the surveys and the names of the people overseeing it? Because it's a fundamental error.

Although having seen the recent Oxford University research on trans children for Nuffield I think probably the prestige and accuracy of Oxford research is under scrutiny.

Kick up a fuss, don't let it go. Is there an FB page or anything linked to the survey?