University project on beliefs around gender identity

[PawResearcher]

Hi — I hope it’s okay to post this here.

I'm a student at Durham University, and I would really love to hear your perspectives on the project I'm doing about people’s beliefs on gender identity and what influences them. A couple of years ago, I got some really helpful responses through Mumsnet on a different project. I know this is a great place to go to for some really thoughtful responses.

I’m running a short, anonymous survey, and I’m hoping to hear a wide range of opinions, so all perspectives are welcome.
It takes about 10–15 minutes and does not collect personal information or emails.
If you’d like to take part, here’s the link:
https://forms.gle/NDAsGBgR3hAxYGtc6

I'll come back when I've finished the project and give an update to those interested.

Thank you very much to anyone who participates — your input is really appreciated!

@PawResearcher do you understand that gender ideology is incompatible with women's human rights or women as a sex class?

I think OP (who, let's not forget, is still a student) had to attempt a very difficult balancing act. If she defined gender identity in a way that would satisfy many people on this board she would get backlash from gender ideologues. And vice versa. If we want to move away from "no debate" I think we should give a little more leeway.

This should be about academic rigour, surely, though, for a dissertation?.
I thought it was for a fresher's survey. OP, has your academic mentor gone through the methodology and data issues with you?

Yes, I think that's a good point.

The question about how I form my views is not clickable for me.

@PawResearcher do you have Mumsnet's express permission to post this survey here?

also: no.

ETA: you should have come here to ask us how to word it properly, tbh.

2nd ETA: you should also not advertise it as anonymous when if you click the link you are automatically shown your own email if you are logged in anywhere at the time you click on the survey.

I hope you're not studying statistics

nah. OP is showing their own bias in the questions

Added to what i wrote in my previous post.

Thank you for asking. Yes, Mumsnet have given me permission. They have reviewed both the survey and my ethics form.

Same here

I have completed it and I think the point is that there is space to express all the views about what is meant by gender (and whether or not it's real) in the open questions. She's deliberately not defining because she wants to find out what respondents think.

We need more students to engage with this topic. Too many are scared off by TRAs - let's not have Mumsnetters do that too.

nah, go away, word it properly. Put a link to the ethics confirmations and make it so it really is anonymous unless someone actually adds their email.

What do you actually hope to get out of this skewed data?

Just to reassure everyone, the study has been fully approved by my university’s ethics committee, and the post was reviewed properly by the Mumsnet moderation team after I posted it.

then you should have stated that in the post - and / or asked them to edit that into the OP:
as for your uni ethics team - let alone how the biased wording in the questions slipped in - perhaps they all need a refresher

that is automatic bias and has no place in an ethical survey

You can see your email because you are logged into Google, you can log out if you want, but that info isn't sent in any case.

but i don't want to have to log out of my account just to do a (badly worded, biased) survey.

It is not clear that the info won't be sent.

We need to be careful with our assumptions about putative methodological issues when we don't know the whole picture.

I suspect there isn't a definition of gender because gender cannot be defined.

Okay, you’ve said your piece and it’s up to you if you want to participate or not. You’re just sounding a bit rabid now.

I'm going to stick up for the original poster @PawResearcher here.
I was initially quite sceptical at the survey, I am still a little now, but less so.

OP if you're wondering why there's an undercurrent of hostility here, it's because there have been some bad faith actions disguised as "research" in the past. The entire generder critical forum has been bot web scraped for "research" with no permission or consent given by either the posters or MN at least twice that we know of by gender activists LARPing as "researchers". This breaks GDPR law as well as any ethics guidelines that I assume any reputable university would require for research. In addition academia is widely recognised as being institutionally ideologically captured by woke progressives. I hope that helps give context and understanding.

The survey does ask some quite open ended questions. I expect the replies to those questions to range quite far off topic because the terms used weren't defined. I do understand that by leaving the terms loosely defined you can gain insight into beliefs, and I accept this as valid. One I hope constructive criticism is that I would have done is to ask What do you understand these terms ( e.g. gender ) to mean? with a list of terms. That way you have not only got respondants' definitions of terms, but you would also have their definitions to give deeper context their answers to the open ended questions. I think this would have given you much more information for your study.
Instead of defining the contentious terms yourself, ask the respondant to define their understanding of contentious terms. Surely that the meaning of some terms is contentious and disputed means that's a rich source of data for research. You cannot research terms everyone agrees on, there's no point.

It does feel like the survey could be construed as lightly favouring a certain viewpoint, but it could just as easily be properly neutral, just inspired by questions grouped from a certain viewpoint. In my opinion I do have a small amount of suspicion about the movies behind the research but I am prepared to give the benefit of the doubt that it is in good faith. Besides we have to take at least some risk to get our voices heard outside of our own viewpoint. If it helps people understand our viewpoint better then I'm all for that.

@PawResearcher I understand you cannot explain the study before it is complete, because to do so would influence the data you collect and thus corrupt the result. But once the study is finished I would very much appreciate you telling us more about the study. Any premises it was based upon, reasonings used to arrive at your conclusions, any anonymised data that stood out. What matched your expectations, what surprised you. And the paper itself so we can read it if possible please.

PS for context I have completed the survey.

Finally, someone making a healthy constructive suggestion on an issue they felt appeared in the survey. I appreciate this comment. It’s been so disheartening to see how many comments present themselves as ‘suggestions for improvement’ when they’re actually unnecessarily harsh and entirely unhelpful. At the end of the day, there is a student on the other side of the screen reading these comments, think we all need to talk a step back and remember this.

Hi everyone,

I can sense there’s a fair amount of distrust in this discussion, which is completely understandable. As @lechiffre55 pointed out, gender-critical viewpoints have been misused in research, and I completely agree that bias exists within educational institutions - something I’ve experienced myself. Being part of the younger generation, I’ve seen first-hand how these biases can operate within universities.

This is exactly what inspired me to undertake this project: to create a research study that is genuinely neutral, grounded in facts, and based on first-hand experiences. While I won’t share my personal opinion on gender ideology, as I consider that unprofessional, I can assure you that your responses will not be skewed or judged in any way.

I will be posting the results of the research once it is complete, and I am excited to hear all your thoughts!

Thank you for raising this. I want to reassure you that I cannot see anyone’s email from survey responses. The only way I would contact someone directly is if you choose to provide your email for a follow-up interview, which is entirely optional. All survey responses remain anonymous unless you explicitly give permission to be contacted.

The concept of gender can be defined, e.g. the male sex or the female sex, especially when considered with reference to social and cultural differences rather than biological ones.

Gender is different to gender identity, which I agree is less easily defined.

However, it's a dissertation for a degree, so it is entirely valid to raise points. This person is a university undergraduate, not a child, and to be fair is fielding the queries well.

Thank you, @lechiffre55
Good points.