Measuring the Growth of Gender-Inclusive Surveys Around the World

Abstract

As ideas about gender identity evolve, survey researchers around the world are working to understand how best to measure sex and gender in a way that is both accurate and inclusive. Emerging best practices differ widely between countries based on cultural and societal norms and the construction of language around gender. In this paper, we examine how survey creators have changed how they ask about gender in the past decade across 11 linguistically and culturally diverse countries. We measure the number of answer options included in gender questions created by SurveyMonkey users between 2012 and 2022. Our findings show that the number of gender questions with more than two answer options increased in all countries examined in our research. Canada, the United Kingdom, and Australia show the highest levels of gender questions with more than two answer options in 2022, while Egypt and Nigeria have the lowest levels.