Creating a culturally-relevant survey question about gender for Latino adult and teen participants

One important way that researchers can make sure the information they learn can be applied to people from many different walks of life is to collect information about the people they study, such as their race, ethnicity, sexuality, and gender. As a study team that works often with immigrant and refugee participants of all ages, we realized that many of the common ways that researchers today ask about gender may not always be understood by participants, especially those who have grown up in other countries or who speak languages other than English. Even though our research studies often ask for Latino adults and teenagers to share their gender, as researchers we did not always know if they understood the question or the options we provided. Our team set out to learn more about this, and to figure out how researchers can best ask these questions.

In fall of 2023 and spring of 2024, our team conducted interviews with Latino adolescents and parents/caregivers to understand how they think about gender in English and Spanish, what gendered language they were familiar and unfamiliar with, and what suggestions they had for researchers who wanted to ask about participants' gender identity.

In this next phase of the study, our research team will create new gender survey questions using what we learned from the interviews and will get more feedback on these changes in brief interviews with new Latino participants. After fine-tuning the questions, we will create a survey to be tested by many participants in order to validate the measure so that it can be used by other researchers in the future.

The interviews and surveys will be conducted in 2025.