Asking the UK their Gender: Inclusive survey design

As attitudes in society shift, so does the market research landscape and we are increasingly finding that the way we ask participants about sex and gender is evolving. It is often not necessary or appropriate to ask someone's sex, it may be more appropriate to measure gender and, for practical and data protection reasons, it is often not advisable to allow participants to self-describe using open text. It is for these reasons that Ipsos is suggesting an approach which is more inclusive for today’s UK society.

To ensure that the research we conduct for our clients is accurate and representative, it is vital that participants can answer questions about themselves in a way that makes them feel engaged and valued for who they are.

Previous research, shown later in this paper, has also shown that moving from a binary question with just male and female response options, or a question where it is unspecified whether it is measuring sex or gender, to an inclusive gender question does not result in significant changes to trends.

Our new recommended question is also based on extensive cognitive testing and piloting against other inclusive gender questions using both qualitative and quantitative research.

This paper explains our rationale for the change from our previous recommended inclusive gender question and shares some details about the research that informed the development of this new question.