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New tools in CGSHE Research Equity Toolkit foster gender inclusive research

June 7, 2022   |   News, Blog

The Centre for Gender & Sexual Health Equity at the University of British Columbia Faculty of Medicine has released the next tools in its Gender & Sex in Methods & Measurement Research Equity Toolkit, designed to help researchers be more inclusive of people who are marginalized and minoritized based on their genders, sexes and sexualities.

Tool #2 Effective Recruitment Strategies helps researchers design a clear plan for identifying and reaching prospective participants, providing them with information about the study, and enrolling them into it. The tool also considers what to take into account when recruiting people who are marginalized and minoritized based on their genders, sexes and sexualities. Building on that, Tool #3 Sampling Plans and Data Analyses explores the relationship between sampling and gender, sex and sexuality, offering researchers questions to ask themselves and illustrative example situations to walk through as they consider their research samples.

“Whether they are a trainee, or a well-established scientist, the toolkit will give researchers the skills, language and confidence to think critically about every step of the research process — from designing a new survey measure to working with existing administrative data to updating a longitudinal survey,” said Dr. A.J. Lowik, CGSHE Project Lead/Gender Equity Advisor at UBC.

The CGSHE Research Equity Toolkit Series is funded through a five-year CIHR Sex and Gender Science Chair in Creating Gender-Transformative Sexual Health (PI: Dr. Kate Shannon, Professor of Social Medicine at UBC) aimed at building more equitable gender and sexual health research and practice in Canada. The toolkits are developed together with an international advisory and co-author team of 2S/LGBTQ research experts.

Dr. Sari van Anders, a member of the CGSHE Gender & Sex in Methods & Measurement Advisory and a Professor at Queen’s University, said this resource is sorely needed. “Too often, researchers think about gender, sex and sexuality as a sort of ‘add-on’ consideration rather than incorporating these variables into all the stages of research design from question to knowledge translation.”

Stay tuned for Tool #4 coming this fall! To learn more, click here.