Open University - psych undergraduates don't use biology (science) any more in research?

[ahumanfemale]

I've just seen in a psychology final year research survey (project) in which respondents are asked what gender they identify as. Options are:

1. male
2. female
3. other (please state)
4. don't want to say.

What are you supposed to write if you are male/female because that's you're biological sex, but you don't identify as either - and how do they define identifying? How do I know if I "identify" as a man or a woman? What IS a man or a woman if it's not biological sex?? Is someone like me now 'other'??

But that's kind of minor in relation to the issue of how this impacts research more widely.

I know that psychology can often skate on the edges of science, but surely data collection for research (even undergrad projects) HAS to be based on reality - unless it's research on delusions (which this wasn't)?

On the same page, you have to state your age (not the one you identify as, but your actual age) and state your ethnicity (can't identify into that either). How can it be scientific to identify into one of those three, but not the others? The research was also not about gender identity or biological sex. These questions appeared as standard markers to later analyse the data.

How does this work in reality? Studies often get compared. So, "Study X showed the women found their 20s more difficult to navigate than men, whilst study Y indicated that men found that more difficulties arose in their 30s than their 20s." If one of those studies uses biological sex and the other uses gender identification, they cannot be compared - they're measuring different populations. Yet, a hidden change in definition makes that impossible to know.

How is academia dealing with this, in particular psychology departments - I assume it's not just the Open University Psychology department that has decided biological sex should be usurped by inner feelz in how it teaches academic research?

*your biological sex

I suppose depending on the project it could be valid to ask for gender people identify as but it wouldn’t make much sense unless you also asked for sex as there is not much in common between a woman and a transwoman. It makes little sense in combining these two groups in your data analysis.

It's a recipe for meaningless research findings. In my industry, the most highly-paid racial group is "prefer not to say".

I pointed out similar to a woke-ish placement student once at my work, who asked us to fill out a survey for her final year dissertation. As I didn’t consider myself to have a gender and rejected the concept of gender for myself, how do I answer the question? I don’t identify as male or female (I accept I am female in terms of sex, but I don’t identify with gender); I don’t have an ‘other’ to state, and I am happy to say, the question is just presuming that I have a gender. It’s unanswerable.

I think in the end I wrote ‘NON-BELIEVER’ in the ‘other’ category. I gave her the option of that or the good old scrawling out gender and writing sex - thing is that is more of a message to the question-asker, and in this instance I had the question-asker there to discuss with.

I don't think the OU would be dictating or deciding this, it would be down to the individual publishing the survey. I work in a psychology department and the approach taken to this very much depends on the person doing the work.

@newdocket from what I understand the students have to show their tutor the questions before launching it - I think at least, maybe I'm wrong?

Yes, tutor would have to see it. I guess my point was that tutor okay-ing it does not mean top-down requirement. I would be surprised if any psychology department went down the gender not sex route as a blanket rule, it would depend on the person and the topic. Research into sex differences in pain response, for example, would ask for sex. Psychology is so broad and there is a huge distance between eg the researcher exploring individual experiences of bereavement and the researcher examining the effectiveness of treatment A vs B in breast cancer patients with depression.

How it works in reality (in terms of the results) is that as a researcher you end up with a tiny number of 'other' and 'prefer not to say' results that are excluded from any gender based analysis but would be included in other analyses.

For example, let's say I'm currently doing some research on whether there is an association between happiness and exercise levels in the general population- I have 300 completed surveys and 4 people ticked 'other': I have 300 sets of results to use to analyse the overall research question and 296 to include in any gender related analysis. 4 isn't big enough a sample to draw any conclusions about difference between the 'other' group vs male/female.

If you were targeting non male/female identifying participants specifically you'd be more likely to end up with a big enough 'other' group to analyse as its own group.

If biological sex was critical to the research then the researcher wouldn't be using online surveys anyway, the participants would likely conduct whatever tasks in a lab environment, in person, and more specific questions would be included re biological/identified sex. Whilst online surveys are great for getting big sample sizes you compromise on the reliability of the responses which can be a big limitation in some research.

I really don't think there is a big issue here.

So does it really not matter that there is a shift in how the population is measured in studies? Why bother looking for a difference between men and women if you're not actually measuring men and women but just people's feelings about themselves? It would be more relevant to ask them whether they've had a good morning or stressful one before filling in the survey wouldn't it? What does the male/female category mean? And while it could be argued that previously people may have filled it in "incorrectly", it's fair to say that in the student population now vs 10 years ago there's a lot more people who would say they're male when they're not, and vice versa.

If you're asking something in relation people's experiences of the world, for example, there WILL be a difference in certain areas based on their sex. Having people identify into the opposite sex category would surely skew results? Unless of course men and women as a class have very similar experiences socially.

It used to be that people were claiming man/ woman were ID and make female were sex hence the woman=adult human female thing.

Seems male/female is quickly being refined as ID as well.

Leaving no words to describe the group of people who are cunty, as a distinct group, in any situation.

PP who said the highest earning group are 'prefer not to say' is interesting, I know a lot of white men who have for years felt that they don't want to be identified that way, why do they need to know this etc etc

I'm wondering now how surveys are conducted if, for example, they what to research sex-based issues. Or would nobody ever use an online survey to measure sex-based experiences?

I'm going to have to do something similar to this and I feel it might be better to divide people by geographical area, educational level, hair colour, eye colour or by the number of times they've travelled abroad. It would be about as useful as self identity - and perhaps more interesting!