Practice

In research, a lot happens before and after we design and conduct a study – we need to apply for funding, get ethical approval before we start, and publish our results after we’ve finished! Tool #8 focuses on navigating such pre/post research activities. It explores ways to think about the practice of identity disclosure, when and how to engage sex and gender subject matter experts, and the politics and ethics of publishing raw datasets. And much more!

How do we design and validate inclusive scales? How do we use pre-existing scales with known shortcomings when it isn’t feasible to develop a new one? Validated scales undergo specific scientific testing to ensure their reliability and generalizability. However, when scales are validated only with endosex, cisgender people, whether they can be reliably used with intersex, trans, and Two-Spirit people is called into question. Tool #7 explores these questions and provides strategic tips and recommendations!

Researchers aren’t always working with primary data, they often work with pre-existing, secondary and older data. Sometimes, this means that the data being used was not collected in a way that aligns with recommended practices for measuring gender, sex and sexuality. How should researchers deal with these issues? Tool #6 provides some strategies and tips.

Would you like your research to be responsive to ever-changing understandings of how to measure gender/sex/sexuality variables? As the research landscape changes, this tool serves as a guide for attending to inadequate measures used in the past and trying to plan and design better research in the future. It cover topics like accounting for shifts in participant identity and reframing research foci in light of new information.

This tool helps researchers understand whether, when and how to ask participants about their genders & sexes. There is no single, correct way to measure people’s genders and sexes, in part because these terms have multiple meanings. This tool serves as a guide to walk researchers through some common approaches to gender and sex measurement with a focus on intentionality, precision and harm reduction.

When we recruit participants to our research studies, they become a part of our sample – the group of people we will collect data from, or who we will generate data with, to answer our research questions or test our hypotheses. There are several points to consider about sampling in relationship to gender, sex, and sexuality. Here, we offer questions for researchers to ask themselves, issues to carefully consider, and some illustrative example situations.

Once we have determined who will be eligible for our research studies, we need to develop a recruitment strategy – a clear plan for identifying and reaching prospective participants, providing them with information about the study, and enrolling them into it. This tool will explore considerations to take into account when recruiting people who are marginalized and minoritized based on their genders, sexes and sexualities.

As part of research, we develop guidelines about who can and who cannot participate in our studies based on shared characteristics called eligibility criteria or inclusionary criteria. This tool is focused on determining and communicating eligibility criteria in ways that are attentive to the lives of people of marginalized and minoritized sexes and genders, which includes but is not limited to intersex, trans, nonbinary and Two-Spirit people.