They Don't Run Away: The use of inclusive Gender Measures in an experimental study on representativity, drop-out rates and perceived difficulty to respond

Despite growing recognition of gender diversity, many Swiss surveys continue to rely on binary sex/gender measures. Concerns about respondent reactions, questionnaire completion rates, and conservative backlash can deter the implementation of more inclusive gender measures. This paper presents empirical evidence on the acceptability and feasibility of implementing comprehensive gender identity measures in general population surveys. Using an experimental design within an online Swiss panel survey, we tested various approaches to measuring assigned sex and gender identity. Participants were randomly assigned to four conditions varying the placement and combination of questions about sex assigned at birth and a non-dichotomous gender identity measure. We assessed completion rates, perceived question difficulty, and potential selective dropouts, particularly among conservative respondents or those holding biological essentialist views of gender. Our results challenge concerns about implementing inclusive gender measures in surveys. We found no significant differences in questionnaire completion rates between groups presented with traditional binary sex questions versus non-dichotomous gender measures. The perceived difficulty of answering gender identity questions was remarkably low and comparable to traditional sex questions. Importantly, we observed no selective dropout among conservative respondents or those holding biological essentialist views of gender differences. Finally, we analyzed potential linguistic differences in the perceived difficulty of answering sex and gender questions between German and French-speaking respondents, to address considerations for multilingual contexts. These findings provide empirical support for the feasibility of implementing more inclusive gender measures in general population surveys. We demonstrate that some concerns about respondent reactions and data quality, while understandable, may be overstated. The paper concludes with practical recommendations for survey researchers seeking to implement more inclusive gender measures while maintaining high response rates and data quality.