Embracing Complexity: Variation in Faculty’s Attitudes Toward Inclusive Measures of Gender and Sexuality in Social and Health Sciences Research

ABSTRACT

In the absence of adequate measurement efforts, expansive gender and sexual identities will remain underexplored in quantitative social science and health research. We use primary survey data (N = 309) to identify factors associated with U.S.based social and health science faculty’s attitudes toward inclusive gender and sexuality measures in participant-based research. Results suggest that political science faculty rated expansive gender and sexuality measures as less important to their own research, relative to psychology, sociology, and health sciences faculty. In addition, cisgender/heterosexual women and LGBTQ+ identifying faculty rate and apply these measures more positively compared to faculy who identify as cisgender/heterosexual men. Finally, faculty engaging in predominantly quantitative research, or in teaching-focused positions, had lower ratings of the importance of gender expansive measurement. Results suggest that while individual characteristics shape faculty’s attitudes toward and use of inclusive gender and sexuality measures, disciplinary and academic contexts also matter.

KEYWORDS:

• Faculty
• gender
• sexuality
• social surveys
• measurement
• LGBTQ
• academia

Acknowledgments

We would like to thank Rachel Watson for her input on the project, as well as Ana Marchese for their contributions to data collection.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

This study was funded by an Interdisciplinary Seed Grant (2018) by the College of Arts and Sciences, University of Wyoming.