Grateful for 1,400+ Responses! Survey Now Closed

[PawResearcher]

This is a message to everyone who completed my survey on gender identity and belief - a huge thank you. I received an incredible response, with over 1,400 replies. More than 90% of respondents wrote free-text answers, many of them thoughtful, detailed, and clearly heartfelt. I want to read every single one, which is the main reason I have now closed the survey. It was very important to me that this project be as objective and data-driven as possible, and the large number of responses has genuinely helped to support that.

As expected for an online, voluntary survey, the sample isn’t representative of the wider population; it leans left-of-centre and is generally highly educated.
Even so, there are meaningful variations across key subgroups based on sex, gender identity (if any), and age. That’s absolutely fine for the purposes of this project, which focuses on understanding the factors that shape beliefs rather than measuring public opinion.

Thank you also to those who provided contact details for possible follow-up interviews. Your information will be kept confidential, and I will only contact a small number of people. The interviews will help me explore how individuals understand and reflect on their beliefs, particularly where these may have shifted over time.

I’ll be spending the next few months finishing my dissertation and working through the data carefully, so I really appreciate your patience. Once I know the appropriate process and timing for sharing results, I will provide an update.
There has been a great deal of kindness, care, and openness in the survey comments, and I’m very grateful for that. I’m a 21-year-old undergraduate (female, if that is of interest) who is genuinely curious about this topic and approaching it from an academic standpoint. One of the most common suggestions for making this conversation less divisive was the importance of genuinely listening to all perspectives - and that is exactly what I am trying to do.

Thank you again to everyone who participated.

No problems. Happy to help. Good luck with the dissertation.

'it leans left-of-centre and is generally highly educated'

FWR in a nutshell - a much maligned group of people.

Thank you so much for taking the time to post this detailed update. I enjoyed completing your thought provoking survey l. Good luck with the analysis and your dissertation.

What survey? I never saw it?

I also missed this, so just interested to know, @PawResearcher , how long did it take before you received your 1400+ replies? I often wonder how many of us there are here. I rarely have anything to contribute and use FWR as more of a learning resource, so although my visible "footprint" here is tiny, its importance to me is much greater.

Thanks for your message! I had the survey open for a week, and the response was much larger than I expected. I can’t share detailed breakdowns before I’ve completed the full analysis, but I can say that there was a wide mix of perspectives, including several coming from gender-critical feminist outlooks, alongside many with very different views.

Because this project is part of my undergraduate dissertation, I need to be careful about what I share at this stage of the research, but I really appreciate how many people from Mumsnet chose to take part. Whether people post a lot or mostly read, it’s clear that these discussions matter to them, and that came through strongly in the responses.

As someone with a survey that has been open for months currently at 38 responses, I am so envious!!!

That's marvelous op.

I didn't see your original post so not sure what your field is, text data is very hard to deciper so do reach out to the data science community if you need help in figuring out how to process it.

Is it a bit niche?

No really - its just its for students and they get a lot of requests for surveys.

Thanks! My survey included both multiple-choice and open-ended questions. The open-ended responses alone added up to over 250,000 words of really thoughtful comments. I’m studying anthropology, and my undergraduate dissertation focuses on what influences the formation and shaping of beliefs about gender identity. Do you have any suggestions for the best approach to analyse such a large volume of qualitative data?

I’m sorry you didn’t get the chance to share your perspective. The survey was posted on Mumsnet (and other platforms) last week and asked about people’s views on different aspects of gender identity, the factors that have shaped those beliefs, and included open-ended questions to allow respondents to expand on their thoughts. Although you weren’t able to take part yourself, I’ll be returning to Mumsnet to share the survey results with everyone.

It might be worth checking out r/SampleSize on Reddit. It’s a very active subreddit and has lots of students from all sorts of backgrounds and with a wide range of viewpoints.

OOOOOhhhh Thank you! Will try that

I filled out your survey but I feel the questions assumed that "gender identity" is a tangible concept. I think it could have used more skepticism and neutrality on the topic.

I thought we were all far right?