Making Demographics Inclusive and Intentional
From left: Kristen L. Eckstrand, Christine Call, Nabila Jamal-Orozco, Lorraine Blatt
Research scientists have plenty of opportunities to think about how they are asking, why they are asking, and the repercussions of asking—or omitting— particular questions about demographics.
Christine Call, a postdoctoral researcher in the Department of Psychiatry, has been working with colleagues Kristen L. Eckstrand, assistant professor of psychiatry, and Lorraine Blatt and Nabila Jamal-Orozco, both psychology graduate students in the Learning Research and Development Center, to encourage researchers to think differently about how and why they use demographic data.
Their paper on an ethics and social-justice approach to collecting and using demographic data, published in the journal “Perspectives on Psychological Science,” serves as a roadmap.
“We often become entrenched in the patterns in which we do things,” Eckstrand says. “One reason we wrote this was to give people a reason to rethink those patterns. Sometimes we choose to make a decision depending on whether we feel compelled by a rationale to do it. This paper was an opportunity to give people a rationale to think about things a bit differently.”
Consider:
Are demographic options inclusive? Listing only “man” or “woman” as options when people don’t identify with either can be a signal that researchers don’t find a person’s identity valid.
Are they relevant? If someone is studying racial or ethnic differences, they typically default to U.S. Census categories. But those categories leave out some identities, and they are socially constructed. “Researchers need to ask the right questions to determine what’s most relevant to what they actually want to know,” Blatt says.
Are they representative? Researchers need to ensure they are recruiting representative samples for their studies. “Right now,” Call says, “we see that is not the case. We still have largely white, educated, industrialized, rich, and Democratic samples.”
Are they harmful? “Researchers must be careful that we’re not using data in a way that can harm communities and that we’re not centering the wrong thing. We need to be careful that we’re not attributing the inequity to the social characteristics, but to the factors that create them,” says Call.
Are they made with intentionality? “Intentionality in demographic data collection is essential for promoting ethical practices, social justice, and equitable outcomes,” Jamal-Orozco says. “It empowers individuals by valuing their identities and experiences, identifies disparities, informs targeted interventions, and helps build a more inclusive and just society for all.”