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

Sophie Horstmann, Corinna Schmechel, Kerstin Palm, Sabine Oertelt-Prigione and Gabriele Bolte
Additional contact information
Sophie Horstmann: Department of Social Epidemiology, Institute of Public Health and Nursing Research, University of Bremen, 28359 Bremen, Germany
Corinna Schmechel: Gender and Science Research Unit, Institute of History, Humboldt-University of Berlin, 10099 Berlin, Germany
Kerstin Palm: Gender and Science Research Unit, Institute of History, Humboldt-University of Berlin, 10099 Berlin, Germany
Sabine Oertelt-Prigione: Department of Primary and Community Care, Radboud University Medical Center, 6500 HB Nijmegen, The Netherlands
Gabriele Bolte: Department of Social Epidemiology, Institute of Public Health and Nursing Research, University of Bremen, 28359 Bremen, Germany

IJERPH, 2022, vol. 19, issue 12, 1-21

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: sex; gender; intersectionality; scoping review; operationalisation; quantitative health research; epidemiology (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I I1 I3 Q Q5 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2022
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/1660-4601/19/12/7493/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/1660-4601/19/12/7493/ (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gam:jijerp:v:19:y:2022:i:12:p:7493-:d:842226

Access Statistics for this article

IJERPH is currently edited by Ms. Jenna Liu

More articles in IJERPH from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().