Date: Tue, 1 Jul 2025 12:21:31 +0100 From: Eleanor Clifford To: UK Research and Innovation (UKRI) Subject: Complaint about wording of questions on doctoral research support communication survey Dear UKRI, The recent survey sent out to doctoral students ([redacted link]) first asks for a participant's "sex", and then asks for their "gender identity". This way of asking is very problematic, and doomed to fail if the intent is to be able to determine trans status, because "sex" is an ambiguous term, and is generally considered to align with a trans person's gender (identity), especially when the person physiologically transitions. I'm a trans woman, and when I filled in the survey, I answered that my sex was "female" (because it is), and then that my gender identity was "woman". That makes me indistinguishable in your results from a cis woman. But if you didn't care about trans status, why did you ask two questions? I believe what you intended to ask for was "sex recorded (or 'assigned') at birth", which would have been significantly clearer, but still not ideal. (And, just in case you were thinking of it, for the love of god do not ask for "biological sex", that would be much worse -- biological attributes of sex like hormones and primary and secondary sex characteristics can be changed, and chromosomes often differ from sex recorded at birth even in cis people. That term was invented with the express purpose of laundering into public discourse an essentialist, incorrect, and transphobic understanding of biology and sex). It is also very important which order you answer the questions in. You should always, always, ask for gender (or, identically, gender identity) first. The reason is because survey participants don't know what questions are going to come next in the survey. I have to spend much of my life dealing with being asked my sex recorded at birth when it's not appropriate, and so if the survey were to have first asked "What is your sex recorded at birth", my immediate reaction would not have been to simply answer straightforwardly, but to wonder "is this all they're going to ask?", become mildly upset, and then tick "Prefer not to say". Whereas, if I were asked the same question _after_ "What is your gender?", then I would understand that the form is trying to understand the experience of trans people, and answer honestly. Still, to make absolutely clear that the intent is to understand trans people's experiences, rather than to ill-advisedly produce aggregate data on the basis of sex recorded at birth rather than gender identity, the best way to ask these two questions is: 1. What is your gender identity? Female/Male/Non-binary/Unsure/Self-describe/Prefer not to say 2. Is your gender identity the same as your sex recorded at birth? Yes/No/Unsure/Prefer not to say If you would like to discuss this further, I am more than happy to do so, either over email or by setting up a meeting. Yours sincerely, Eleanor Clifford

2025-07-10: They say they have shared my email with the EDI team in order to inform how questions are structured in future.