Installation

This package is not on CRAN. To use this package please run the following code:

devtools::install_github("ropensci/gendercoder")
library(gendercoder)

Why would we do this?

Researchers who collect self-reported demographic data from respondents occasionally collect gender using a free-text response option. This has the advantage of respecting the gender diversity of respondents without prompting users and potentially including misleading responses. However, this presents a challenge to researchers in that some inconsistencies in typography and spelling create a larger set of responses than would be required to fully capture the demographic characteristics of the sample.

For example, male participants may provide free-text responses as “male”, “man”, “mail”, “mael”. Non-binary participants may provide responses as “nonbinary”, “enby”, “non-binary”, “non binary”

Manually coding of such free-text responses this is often not feasible with larger datasets. gendercoder() uses dictionaries of common misspellings to re-code free-text responses into a consistent set of responses. The small number of responses not automatically re-coded by gendercoder() can then be feasibly manually recoded.

Motivating example

gendercoder() includes a sample dataset with actual free-text responses to the question “What is your gender?” from a number of studies of English-speaking participants. The sample dataset includes responses from 7756 participants. Naive coding identifies 103 unique responses to this item.

library(gendercoder)
library(dplyr)

sample %>% 
  group_by(Gender) %>% 
  summarise(count = n()) %>% 
  arrange(-count) %>% 
  knitr::kable(caption = "Summary of gender categories before coding")

Recoding using the gender_coder() function classifies all but 28 responses into pre-defined response categories.

sample %>% 
  head(10) %>% 
  mutate(recoded_gender = recode_gender(gender = Gender, dictionary = manylevels_en)) %>% 
  knitr::kable(caption = "The manylevels_en dictionary applied to `head(sample)`")

sample %>% 
  mutate(recoded_gender = recode_gender(gender = Gender, dictionary = manylevels_en)) %>% 
  filter(!is.na(recoded_gender)) %>% 
  group_by(recoded_gender) %>% 
  summarise(count = n()) %>% 
  arrange(-count) %>% 
  knitr::kable(caption = "Summary of gender categories after use of the *manylevels_en* dictionary")

In this dataset unclassified responses are a mix of unusual responses and apparent response errors (e.g. numbers and symbols). While some of these are genuinely missing (i.e. Gender = 40), other could be manually recoded, or added to a custom dictionary.

sample %>% 
  mutate(recoded_gender = recode_gender(gender = Gender, dictionary = manylevels_en)) %>% 
  filter(is.na(recoded_gender)) %>% 
  knitr::kable(caption = "All responses not classified by the built-in dictionary")

Options within the function

sample %>% 
  head(10) %>% 
  mutate(recoded_gender = recode_gender(gender = Gender, dictionary = fewlevels_en)) %>% 
  knitr::kable(caption = "The fewlevels_en dictionary applied to `head(sample)`")

sample %>% 
  mutate(recoded_gender = recode_gender(gender = Gender, dictionary = fewlevels_en)) %>% 
  group_by(recoded_gender) %>% 
  summarise(count = n()) %>% 
  arrange(-count) %>% 
  knitr::kable(caption = "Summary of gender categories after use of the *fewlevels_en* dictionary")

# name of the vector element is the user input value and the vector element is the 
# replacement value corresponding to that name as a lower case string.
custom_dictionary <- c(
  masculino = "man",
  hombre = "man",
  mujer = "woman",
  femenina = "woman"
)

str(custom_dictionary)

##  Named chr [1:4] "man" "man" "woman" "woman"
##  - attr(*, "names")= chr [1:4] "masculino" "hombre" "mujer" "femenina"

sample %>% 
  mutate(recoded_gender = recode_gender(gender = Gender, 
                                        dictionary = c(fewlevels_en, 
                                                       custom_dictionary))) %>% 
  group_by(recoded_gender) %>% 
  summarise(count = n()) %>% 
  arrange(-count) %>% 
  knitr::kable(caption = "Summary of gender categories after use of the combined dictionaries")

sample %>% 
  mutate(recoded_gender = recode_gender(gender = Gender, 
                                        dictionary = c(fewlevels_en, 
                                                       custom_dictionary))) %>% 
  filter(is.na(recoded_gender)) %>% 
  knitr::kable(caption = "All responses not classified by the combined dictionaries")

sample %>% 
  mutate(recoded_gender = recode_gender(gender = Gender, 
                                        dictionary = c(fewlevels_en, 
                                                       custom_dictionary),
                                        retain_unmatched = TRUE)) %>% 
  group_by(recoded_gender) %>% 
  summarise(count = n()) %>% 
  arrange(-count) %>% 
  knitr::kable(caption = "Summary of gender categories after use of the combined dictionary and `retain_unmatched = TRUE`")

## Some results not matched from the dictionary have been filled with the original values.

A disclaimer on handling gender responses

This package attempts to remove typographical errors from free text gender data. The defaults that we used are specific to our context and the time at which the package was developed and your data or context may be different.

We offer two built-in dictionaries, manylevels_en and fewlevels_en. Both are necessarily opinionated about how gender descriptors collapse into categories.

However, as these are culturally specific, they may not be suitable for your data. In particular the fewlevels_en option makes opinionated choices about some responses that we want to acknowledge are potentially problematic. Specifically,

• In ‘fewlevels_en’ coding intersex responses are recoded as ‘sex and gender diverse’
• In ‘fewlevels_en’ responses where people indicate they are trans and indicate their identified gender are recoded as the identified gender (e.g. ‘Male to Female’ is recoded as ‘woman’). We wish to acknowledge that this may not reflect how some individuals would classify themselves when given these categories and in some contexts may make systematic errors. The manylevels_en coding dictionary attempts to avoid these issues as much as possible - however users can provide a custom dictionary to add to or overwrite our coding decisions if they feel this is more appropriate. We welcome people to update the built-in dictionary where desired responses are missing.
• In both dictionaries, we assume that typographical features such as spacing are not relevant to recoding the gender response (e.g. we assume that “genderqueer” and “gender queer” are equivalent). This is unlikely to be true for all contexts.

The ‘manylevels_en’ coding separates out those who identify as trans female/male or cis female/male into separate categories it should not be assumed that all people who describe as male/female are cis, if you are assessing trans status we recommend a two part question see:

Bauer, Greta & Braimoh, Jessica & Scheim, Ayden & Dharma, Christoffer. (2017). Transgender-inclusive measures of sex/gender for population surveys: Mixed-methods evaluation and recommendations. PLoS ONE. 12.

Contributing to this package

This package is a reflection of cultural context of the package contributors. We acknowledge that understandings of gender are bound by both culture and time and are continually changing. As such, we welcome issues and pull requests to make the package more inclusive, more reflective of current understandings of gender inclusive languages and/or suitable for a broader range of cultural contexts. We particularly welcome addition of non-English dictionaries or of other gender-diverse responses to the manylevels_en and fewlevels_en dictionaries.

The “Adding to the dictionary” vignette includes information about how to make changes to the dictionary either for your own use or when contributiong to the gendercoder package.

Acknowledgement of Country

We acknowledge the Wurundjeri people of the Kulin Nation as the custodians of the land on which this package was developed and pay respects to elders past, present and future.