Medical research - asks for gender

[Morecoffeewanted]

Recently asked to participate in some medical reseach. It's an online questionnaire only.

One of the first questions is

Gender : what do you identify as?

1. Woman ( includes Transgender Women)

1. Man ( includes Transgender Men)

Not sure if I am reading this correctly Do they mean TIM included as Women?

It's a disease that has a larger number of women and is a physical disease. The research asks about physical symptoms.

There may be very few TIM with this disease but I have never seen any research that tell us how many.

Obvious TIM and TIW need to be included. It may be that hormone use or something else has a bearing. No one knows though. Ideally I think that they deserve their own catagories.

I am intending to write to the Researchers asking them what this means and why they think this is the best way to do it.

If anyone has ever seen a medical paper on how combining Women plus TIM affects the quality of medical research can you please point me in the right direction.

I have seen this several times. I usually make them aware of the Sullivan review and say that I find this discriminatory towards women and trans people and unscientific.

it is also worth contacting the ethics committee because they need to start to do their jobs properly.

I have also send this https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1877575625000266

I refuse to complete this sort of crap and tell them why.

The Sullivan review is worthless because it doesn't actually recognise how data has been collected for decades. It's the civil service equivalent of sticking fingers in the ears while shouting "I can't hear you". It would have been interesting had she and her team actually used health data in their research. Instead it was written in the fantasy manners with which trans people are accused of indulging in.

But what about the poor non binary folx? Are they being erased?

Here is the NIHR Sex and Gender policy for research:
https://www.nihr.ac.uk/about-us/who-we-are/policies-and-guidelines/sex-and-gender-research
Not sure whether it helps or not!

In the early days of COVID I watched an online talk by a very senior health researcher, who was talking about COVID research, including the different effects of the virus on men and women.
Someone asked if they were using sex or gender to define male and female. She said gender, and added that the Department of Health don't record "birth sex".

So basically the research on different effects on men and women is invalid, because they included some people of the opposite sex in each category. I was pretty shocked, not least at the assertion that the DoH only record gender not sex.

DHSC doesn't record any data, so it doesn't record gender or sex.

She said they record gender. I'll see if I can find a recording so I can check her exact words. She may not have said DoH, I might have got the organisation wrong, but she definitely said that the health data in the study was recorded against gender.

DHSC collects no health data. They use some but they don't connect any.

Actually, I think they may collect some data on abortions. But the health data they use comes almost exclusively from the NHS or ukhsa.

Just ask when the grown ups are back,

Thank you all so much for the ideas. Will contact them and let you know how I get on.