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The only way I can think of to get around that would be to have folks who are interested in being part of the study "self-report" about their gender to you in the background. The assumption there would be that if someone was bothering to do that, they would have motivation to be truthful about their gender in order to have a successful analysis (on top of the underlying assumption that most people on a professional list such as this would be honest, hardworking folks in the first place).
The downside there is that if you whittle it down to the number of people who are willing to provide their genders to you and who are willing to take the time to do so might leave you with a much smaller number of overall participants. So it would be a matter of having more certainty about a smaller number of people versus having less certainty about a larger population.
-----Original Message-----
From: techwr-l-bounces+doug -dot- grossman=sas -dot- com -at- lists -dot- techwr-l -dot- com [mailto:techwr-l-bounces+doug -dot- grossman=sas -dot- com -at- lists -dot- techwr-l -dot- com] On Behalf Of Dan Goldstein
Subject: RE: Statistical analysis
You want caveats? I'll give ya caveats. Not only is there a debatable percentage of ambiguous names (what's ambiguous to one coder might be unambiguous to another coder), but in any case, 100% of the names are unverified. A Whirler might choose to create a persona of the other gender; a Whirler could even create multiple accounts with personae of both genders. The Limitations section will specify these possibilities, and more.
That's a humongous caveat in a gender study---to not be certain of the genders of those being studied---but maybe not a statistically significant one. Then again, if there are even 50 out of the 1,500 of us for whom genders cannot be determined with assuredness (which sounds likely), I believe that it *would* be a statistically significant issue. I was trying to remember if there was anything in the sign-up process that revealed our genders, and I couldn't specifically think of anything. I just wasn't certain about that because it's been 17 years since I first signed onto TECHWR-L way back in the APE (Andrew Plato Era).
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