Measuring Transgender Identities: Phase 3

This is the third of three articles detailing research experiments that Gallup undertook in its search to create a more inclusive question about gender that could be asked worldwide and across a broad range of surveys.
The third article describes how Gallup tested questions that can be used to identify transgender respondents.
Historically, gender questions have focused on binary identities and treated gender and sex as one and the same. However, researchers increasingly acknowledge that questions that capture gender may be overly simplistic and fail to include the range of people’s experiences, including the transgender experience. In its effort to create a more inclusive question about gender, Gallup has been testing different versions of gender questions, including ones that measure transgender identities.
This is the third of three articles describing these research experiments. The first presented the results of an experiment testing gender questions that include options other than male and female. These questions could be used on surveys that require a more inclusive question but are not specifically researching gender-related issues.
The second article reviewed the results of an experiment testing question versions that more precisely capture gender identities and are more appropriate for research specifically interested in the experiences of gender minorities.
This article focuses on different approaches to capturing transgender identities.
We tested four gender identity questions in a web survey experiment of 22,882 U.S. adults, conducted April 3-13, 2023, via the nationally representative Gallup Panel. Respondents were randomly assigned to answer one of four question variants. All four versions were presented in the second article of this series.
This article focuses on versions 3 and 4, which included questions asking about transgender identity.
This version tested wording from the National Academies 2022 Issue Brief on measuring sex, gender identity and sexual orientation. Respondents were first asked a question about sex assigned at birth, followed by a question about current gender identity.
Gender identity includes a transgender category, and respondents are allowed to select one option only. (For a more detailed description of the question versions and rationale for changes, please refer to the second article.)
Q1. What sex were you assigned at birth, on your original birth certificate?
Q2. What is your current gender? (Could only select one option)
This version modifies the National Academies question. It still includes sex assigned at birth, but the gender identity question includes a nonbinary option and allows respondents to select more than one option. Importantly, this version included a follow-up question to confirm transgender identity.
Q3. What sex were you assigned at birth, on your original birth certificate?
Q4. Which one of the following best describes your gender? You may select all that apply.
Q5. Some people identify as trans, meaning they have a different gender identity from their sex assigned at birth. Do you consider yourself to be trans?
[Asked of anyone whose sex assigned at birth (Q3) and gender identity (Q4) did not match OR anyone who selected “Trans or transgender” (code 3), “Nonbinary” (code 4) or “I use a different term”(code 5) in Q4.]
Overall, there is no significant difference in the percentages of people selecting the trans/transgender option in versions 3 and 4 (0.2% of respondents vs. 0.3%, respectively).
In version 4, 51 respondents selected more than one option, and of those, 35 were determined to be valid responses. Another 22 of the multi-select responses were people who selected the “I use a different term” option to provide commentary on the question, such as writing in a response like “there are only two genders.” Thirteen of the 35 valid multi-select responses were from respondents who selected trans/transgender and at least one other gender identity, such as transgender and woman.
A widely accepted definition of trans/transgender is someone for whom gender identity is different from sex assigned at birth. Therefore, some researchers have proposed using sex and gender questions to identify transgender individuals. While this is seemingly straightforward, it is more complex in practice and fails to acknowledge that gender is not always binary.
We calculated the number of transgender respondents using this strategy, using two different methods — one that counts fewer respondents as matching on sex and gender and one that counts more as matching.
In version 3, sex assigned at birth matched gender identity in 98.9% of responses (male/male or female/female). Sex and gender did not match in 1.1% of responses, which includes anyone who gave an answer other than these two combinations (male/male or female/female). This includes respondents who said male or female in the sex assigned at birth question and answered the opposite gender, “transgender,” “two-spirit” or “another term” in the gender identity question.
Our second, more conservative method of calculating transgender identity only included people who answered male/female or female/male or who answered transgender in the gender question. This number drops to 0.5%.
In version 4, 99.0% of respondents’ sex and gender matched. Categorizing a match is somewhat more complicated in version 4 because people can select multiple response options. For this question, we counted a “match” if sex and gender were the same and trans/transgender was not selected.
In other words, someone who answered male/man or female/woman counted as a match. If nonbinary was also selected along with matching sex and gender (male/man or female/woman), this counted as a match (0.3% of all responses). All other combinations of responses (1.0%) were coded as not matching. If a more conservative calculation is used for non-matching responses, and only respondents who answered male/woman or female/man or anyone who selected transgender are counted, this number drops to 0.4%.
For both versions, respondents could write in responses if they selected “I use a different term.” Most of the written responses were either nonsensical or a presumed commentary on the question. It included responses like “Stop this game,” “There are only two genders” and “100% man.” These responses were presumed to indicate that the respondent’s sex and gender were a match and were coded as such.
Version 4 included a follow-up question:
Some people identify as trans, meaning they have a different gender identity from their sex assigned at birth. Do you consider yourself to be trans?
This question was asked of anyone whose sex assigned at birth and gender identity did not match (male/woman or female/man). It was also asked of anyone who selected trans/transgender, nonbinary or “I use a different term.”
Respondents who provided obviously false open-ended responses to “I use a different term” were removed from the analysis (n=27). Of those who were asked the question, 44.3% said they identify as trans, representing 0.6% of all responses. We examined who answered yes and no to this question.
These results highlight the importance of specifically asking about transgender identity and not presuming identity based on the combination of sex and gender questions.
These findings demonstrate possible differences in estimates of the transgender population that may be produced from different question wording or calculation methods.
The unweighted estimates range from 0.2% to 1.1%, and while all of these estimates represent a small portion of the population, for a low-incidence population, the difference between 0.2% and 1.1% is a meaningful difference and may lead to erroneous conclusions about the size of this population or changes over time. Changes from 0.5% to 1.1% could lead to headlines, for example, stating the number of people who identify as transgender has more than doubled.
Gender minority respondents were asked the following open-ended question at the end of the question series:
Gallup is testing ways to improve how we ask our gender question. We would like your opinion of the question(s) you just answered. Please use this space to share any suggestions, feedback or personal experiences that may be helpful to our research. If you do not have any suggestions, you may leave this box blank and move to the next question.
Seventeen respondents who identified as transgender (in the gender question) provided feedback on the questions and may help shed light on why different methods for generating estimates may produce different numbers.
These comments can be summarized into three main themes:
Based on these results, we have several recommendations for constructing questions to capture transgender identities.
It is important to note that our results may have differed had we used different question wording, and we could have explored many other methods of calculation. Many researchers are working to improve questions to capture gender identity and transgender identities, and we hope that our research contributes to the findings and discussion.
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