Male/Female Is Not Enough: Adding Measures of Masculinity and Femininity to General Population Surveys

Abstract

Survey research’s sole reliance on binary measures of sex is out of line with contemporary sociological gender theory. By measuring only sex, surveys conflate sex with gender, ignoring variability in gender identification within sex categories and overlap in gender identification between sex categories. As a result, quantitative analyses may lead to statistical misrepresentations about how sex and gender organize social life. In this paper, we examine a gradational gender identification measure administered in a national probability sample mail survey. We assess item nonresponse and reliability, evaluating how gender identification is associated with a binary sex measure and with other demographic measures as well as whether it is subject to context effects due to question order. We also examine predictive validity for a number of outcomes that sociological gender theory and previous literature suggest should be related to gender beyond sex or in different ways for men and women. We find that respondents are able to answer the gender identification measure, that the item nonresponse rate is similar to that for the binary sex measure, and that the measure exhibits reasonable reliability and validity. Importantly, the measure adds explanatory value beyond sex when predicting several outcomes