Thread by @drvicclarke

1/ A thread on why I think collecting demographic data is important in qualitative research (& research more broadly) & a request for your thoughts on this. Am I alone in thinking this is important? I seem to be... based on experiences of ethics scrutiny this yr #AcademicChatter

2/ I get the sense that some researchers - esp those researching students - implicitly imagine their potential participants as the "usual suspects" (white, straight, nondisabled, middle class etc)... I've scrutinised several studies where disability (cog fog etc) would confound

3/ the quant results but no exclusion criteria & no demographics - I don't get it?! I've been told by white male students more than once that if for eg race/ethnicity aren't relevant to the research question there is no need to collect demog data on ethnicity. But as a white

4/ person I'm not convinced I'm a good authority on when ethnicity is & isn't relevant. I have been taught to see myself as existing outside of racial categories/as not racialised. More broadly it matters that in my discipline of psychology most research has been conducted with

5/ White people but is rarely framed as such. At the very, very least shouldn't we acknowledge when our participants are all/mostly white even if our research isn't explicitly about ethnicity? Back in the 1990s I remember my PhD supervisor railing against the refusal to collect

6/ data for "equal opportunities monitoring" as it was known then on sexuality. How can you know if things are un/equal if you're not collecting the data?! Another objection is that demographic questions are sensitive. I sort of get that but when you've asked people to describe

7/ their last orgasm, write a story on anal sex or draw public hair as @ginnybraun & I have done then asking someone their age seems rather straightforward! I wonder if people are worried about getting it wrong or causing offense? I think we need to accept that we might not get

8/ right for everyone (eg gender identity is a meaningful & inclusive concept for some, others will be baffled & some enraged). People are used to answering these kinds of questions more than ever & they are always voluntary - people can & do decline to answer. So I think

9/ collecting demographics is important for ethical reasons - if you're a British psychologist like me it's part of the ethical principle of respect & particularly respect for difference. It's also important for quality reasons - "situating the sample": bpspsychub.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.134…

10/ As an aside I do like checklist quality criteria but I have always treated them as inspiration & invitations (as I would any baking recipe - I have always been an unruly baker) not as cast in stone. Similarly demographics are important for what Lucy Yardley calls displaying

11/ sensitivity to context in qualitative research. How can we discuss the limitations of our "sample" & the knowledge generated from them if we have no demographics? I have heard worries about anonymity & that is always an important consideration. Work around can be as simple as

12/ compiling demographics in a table & not tagging data extracts or anonymising some data. To reduce threat it's important to explain to participants why you are collecting demographics - it can be as simple as - To help me understand something about the range of people taking

13/ part in this research I would be grateful if you could answer the following questions... @ginnybraun & I have a basic discussion of demogs in our textbook Successful Qualitative Research: uk.sagepub.com/en-gb/eur/succ…

14/ For me the question shouldn't be do we collect demographics but how do we? When in data collection (eg start or end of a qual survey?), and how best to word questions. Click/tick box = easier to summarise; open ended = gets closer to how participants make sense of their

15/ identities/lives. At a minimum I usually collect age, sex/gender, race/ethnicity, disability, class, sexuality & occupation. Relationship status is also common (not marital status - ugh!), sometimes religion/belief, children... There are also more open options - what 5 words

15/ best describe your social and political affiliations?

17/ I would be grateful for any suggestions for readings in this area - especially around demogs in qual research. Searching online generated a lot of material on qualitative approaches to demographic research!