Skip to main page content
U.S. flag

An official website of the United States government

Dot gov

The .gov means it’s official.
Federal government websites often end in .gov or .mil. Before sharing sensitive information, make sure you’re on a federal government site.

Https

The site is secure.
The https:// ensures that you are connecting to the official website and that any information you provide is encrypted and transmitted securely.

Access keys NCBI Homepage MyNCBI Homepage Main Content Main Navigation
. 2022 Jun 18;19(12):7493.
doi: 10.3390/ijerph19127493.

The Operationalisation of Sex and Gender in Quantitative Health-Related Research: A Scoping Review

Sophie Horstmann  1   2 , Corinna Schmechel  3 , Kerstin Palm  3 , Sabine Oertelt-Prigione  4   5 , Gabriele Bolte  1   2
Affiliations

The Operationalisation of Sex and Gender in Quantitative Health-Related Research: A Scoping Review

Sophie Horstmann et al. Int J Environ Res Public Health. .

Abstract

Current trends in quantitative health research have highlighted the inadequacy of the usual operationalisation of sex and gender, resulting in a growing demand for more nuanced options. This scoping review provides an overview of recent instruments for the operationalisation of sex and gender in health-related research beyond a concept of mutually exclusive binary categories as male or masculine vs. female or feminine. Our search in three databases (Medline, Scopus and Web of Science) returned 9935 matches, of which 170 were included. From these, we identified 77 different instruments. The number and variety of instruments measuring sex and/or gender in quantitative health-related research increased over time. Most of these instruments were developed with a US-American student population. The majority of instruments focused on the assessment of gender based on a binary understanding, while sex or combinations of sex and gender were less frequently measured. Different populations may require the application of different instruments, and various research questions may ask for different dimensions of sex and gender to be studied. Despite the clear interest in the development of novel sex and/or gender instruments, future research needs to focus on new ways of operationalisation that account for their variability and multiple dimensions.

Keywords: epidemiology; gender; intersectionality; operationalisation; quantitative health research; scoping review; sex.

PubMed Disclaimer

Conflict of interest statement

The authors declare no conflict of interest. The funders had no role in the design of the study; in the collection, analyses, or interpretation of data; in the writing of the manuscript, or in the decision to publish the results.

Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1
Flow diagram. † two reviewers independently screened title and abstracts, disagreements for 161 publications (2.8%), solved by discussion; ‡ two reviewers independently analysed the full articles, disagreements for 20 publications (7.3%), solved by discussion.
Figure 2
Figure 2
Tree diagram visualising the instruments’ methodology and measured dimensions of sex/gender.
Figure 3
Figure 3
Temporal trends in instrument development and applications by group, one bar per 5-year period (a) temporal trends in developed instruments (n = 75, 2 instruments have to be excluded from this analysis due to missing information). (b) Temporal trends in applications (n = 261) of the 77 instruments identified in this review.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

References

    1. Bekker M.H.J. Investigating Gender within Health Research Is More than Sex Disaggregation of Data: A Multi-Facet Gender and Health Model. Psychol. Health Med. 2003;8:231–243. doi: 10.1080/1354850031000087618. - DOI
    1. Bolte G., Jacke K., Groth K., Kraus U., Dandolo L., Fiedel L., Debiak M., Kolossa-Gehring M., Schneider A., Palm K. Integrating Sex/Gender into Environmental Health Research: Development of a Conceptual Framework. IJERPH. 2021;18:12118. doi: 10.3390/ijerph182212118. - DOI - PMC - PubMed
    1. Bottorff J.L., Oliffe J.L., Robinson C.A., Carey J. Gender Relations and Health Research: A Review of Current Practices. Int J. Equity Health. 2011;10:60. doi: 10.1186/1475-9276-10-60. - DOI - PMC - PubMed
    1. Regitz-Zagrosek V., Seeland U. In: Sex and Gender Aspects in Clinical Medicine. Oertelt-Prigione S., Regitz-Zagrosek V., editors. Springer; London, UK: New York, NY, USA: 2012.
    1. Palm K. Verkörperte Sozialität. Zum Interventionspotential Gendertheoretisch Angeleiteter Embodimentforschung in Biologie Und Medizin. In: Mahs C., Riegraf B., Schröttle M., Rendtorff B., editors. Erkenntnis, Wissen, Intervention. Geschlechterwissenschaftliche Perspektiven. Beltz Juventa; Weinheim, Germany: 2015.

Publication types

LinkOut - more resources