Oxford University covid research

[Scrabble]

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.

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?

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

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?

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.

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.

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.

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.

‘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.

I suspect that they sent this new question, after 2 years, because they regret not pandering to the ideology when they started the survey a couple of years ago. But I can't check that because the surveys disappear once you've filled them in.

In similar situations I know tick the "other" box.
If that brings up a box asking for more info I write that I have no gender but I will supply my sex if they are interested.

*now

You should have filled out an ethics & consent form before you started, and you should be given contact details with every new request. Is there anything stored in your emails? Next time they request you fill in a new survey, look for the contact info first.

I'm on a similar covid trial for the ONS and I'd write and complain.

I've found an email. These are the people: The Co-SPACE team
Departments of Experimental Psychology and Psychiatry
University of Oxford, UK
Data from the survey is being passed to policy makers and professionals working with families and young people to help them know how best to support families. The findings have also been discussed widely in local and national news. All reports, news coverage, and further information about the impacts of the study can be found on our website cospaceoxford.org/.

I've submitted a full complaint. Angry and depressed. What kind of society are we becoming, when we can't trust or rely on any of our institutions?

@Allthegoodnamesarechosen Intersex...? It occurs as often as red hair so 1-2% of the population.

I filled out a survey for the ONS the other day (not Covid related) and I was very heartened to see the question 'What sex are you ? Male or Female'. That's it, nothing else.

Intersex isn't a different sex!

A couple of years ago I listened to a public lecture on Covid research. The different effects of Covid on men and women were mentioned. An audience member asked if the statistics presented were referring to sex or gender. The professor giving the talk said gender, and then said the Dept of Health only record gender, not “birth sex”. I was surprised to say the least.
If medical research is genuinely recording self declared gender and not sex, we really do have a problem.

Do complain. I did today with another organisation who gave the options as:
Male
Female
Other
Prefer not to say

If they are going to down this route of asking for gender identity instead of sex, they should include an option of 'None'. The 'prefer not to say' option implies you do have a gender identity, but you don't want to declare it. They should allow people to say they don't have a gender identity.

Scientific research is highly politicised, and very profit-driven. You can't trust things on face value because of this. Experts and scientists can be bought and paid for by the media, an are often.

Sorry you spent this long believing we live in a high trust society and that corruption is sporadic rather than endemic.

Just to say I am in the world of research and it has been well and truly ‘woked’ out of a lot of scientific rigour. Gender is frequently used instead of sex, which is not correct and misleading. I’ve been answering questions on disability research for a while and most of it from ‘best’ universities, who are increasingly ‘biasing’ questions to lead from ideologies, and not lead from investigation e.g. ‘positive’ disabled questions only and very few about negative aspects, if at all. I find myself having to increasingly put comments in the box about how I don’t see questions on my demographic (sex=female) or questions that I can answer without it giving a misleading view (eg why are interventions for disability harmful… er… are they harmful? What are you talking about?)

It is quite depressing. Research and that is including Oxford are as terrified as anyone else of the twitter mob, and some research has been cancelled or stopped if they do not conform to certain online concerns or ideologies. There is engaging with those you are researching, and being ethical and sensitive, but this is something else.

@Scrabble So which box should those who are intersex tick? I keep seeing on here that women don't have penises they have vaginas but what about people who have both, if they have to have one or the other they clearly must be neither!

Those with ‘intersex’ are a) extremely rare and b) biologically one sex

And interestingly those with ‘intersex’ want nothing to do with the gender politics and are not calling for forms to include intersex.