研究人員抨擊美國機構不收集 LGBT+ 數據的決定
科學家們呼籲美國國家科學基金會在其 2023 年勞動力調查中增加一個關於性取向的問題。
資料來源：Max Kozlov / 2023 年 1 月 13 日 / 自然 / 財團法人台灣紅絲帶基金會編譯
位於科羅拉多州萊克伍德的美國國家科學基金會冰芯設施中五顏六色的儲物櫃。
圖片來源：Jim West/Alamy
美國國家科學基金會 (NSF) 決定不在其一項勞動力調查中包含有關性取向的問題，這在社交媒體上掀起了一場風暴。 超過 1,700 名研究人員現在簽署了一封公開信，敦促該機構的負責人重新考慮該決定。他們認為，收集此類信息對於了解科學界的構成和制定減少性少數群體差異的政策至關重要。
LGBT+ 科學家希望如何融入 STEM 工作場所並受到歡迎
美國國家科學與工程統計中心 (NCSES) 是 NSF 的一個分支機構，定期進行多項調查，向政策制定者和研究人員提供有關美國科學勞動力的關鍵數據，包括性別、種族和民族、科學學科和公民身份等人口統計數據。NCSES 多年來一直暗示它正在考慮在其調查中增加有關性取向和性別認同的問題，但延誤讓研究人員感到沮喪。
在 12 月 14 日提交給美國管理和預算辦公室 (OMB) 的一份文件中，NSF 表示將在其 2023 年全國大學畢業生調查中包括一個由兩部分組成的關於性別認同的問題，而不是關於性取向的問題。 NCSES 發言人朱莉婭·米爾頓 (Julia Milton) 在一份聲明中表示，數據品質和隱私問題導致該機構將性取向問題排除在調查之外。 該機構在試點調查中測試了這些問題，得出的結論是，與其他問題相比，該等問題導致更多的受訪者退出調查並且不回答問題。
這封公開信的作者、紐約市哥倫比亞大學的神經科學家 Jon Freeman 多年來一直在推動 NSF 採納此類問題。 他不相信該機構排除性取向問題的理由。 弗里曼在信中寫道，該機構「透過有缺陷的分析、不適當的基準和選擇性報告自己的試驗數據，來證明這一舉措是合理的」。針對此米爾頓沒有回答《自然》雜誌關於信中指控的問題。
前美國人口普查局統計學家南希·貝茨 (Nancy Bates) 表示，「令人困惑的是，他們會忽略性取向問題，因為其他聯邦機構已經成功詢問了 10 年」，她是 2022 年美國國家科學院、工程和醫學關於測量性別、性別認同和性取向共識報告的聯合主席。
「黃金標準」
該決定提出之際，一些研究顯示 LGBT+ 人群在科學領域的代表性不足，並且比非 LGBT+ 人群面臨更多障礙和工作場所騷擾。
「我不再假裝或躲藏」：一位跨性別科學家找到了一個可以稱之為家的實驗室
NSF 的調查被認為是科學工作者的「數據收集黃金標準」，因此這一決定非常重要，Bates 說。 雖然 Milton 表示 NCSES 的調查不會「影響聯邦研究資助資格的確定」，但美國國家衛生研究院 (NIH) 發言人 Emma Wojtowicz 表示，NIH 等的一些美國機構使用的數據來自 NSF 的工作場所調查，以確定哪些群體的代表性不足並有資格獲得促進多樣性的資助。
「如果我們沒有數據來了解潛在的差異或劣勢，那麼數據本身的沉默就會再現不平等」，安娜堡密西根大學研究 LGBT+ 在科學中的代表性的社會學家 Erin Cech 說，並簽署了這封信 。 在2022 年 6 月，美國總統喬·拜登簽署了一項行政命令，指示聯邦機構「推進負責任和有效的收集」性別認同和性取向數據。
調查設計問題
為確保在其調查中添加或修改問題不會導致人們退出或以其他方式扭曲收集到的數據，NCSES 在 2021 年對 5,000 名受訪者進行了大學畢業生試點調查。 它包括性別認同和性取向問題。 NCSES 在提交給 OMB 的文件中表示，它對性取向問題的表現表示擔憂。
為了解決科學中的 LGBTQ+ 差異，我們需要數據
然而NCSES該機構卻測試了一個奇怪的性取向問題版本，洛杉磯威廉姆斯研究所的研究主任 Kerith Conron 說，該研究所是一家研究性取向和性別認同法以及公共政策的智囊團。 這個問題以 Bates 所說的可能讓人們感到困惑的短語開頭，並且包含比其他聯邦調查中使用的更多的回答選項。「我已經待了很長時間，以前從未見過這樣的問題」，Conron 說。而米爾頓則回應說，更廣泛的回應選項可以更廣泛的告知聯邦政府衡量和理解性少數群體的努力」。
Conron 對該機構將性別認同問題納入其中表示讚賞，但表示「NSF 未能將更傳統的性取向衡量標準納入其中」。 在公開信中，弗里曼呼籲該機構公佈試點研究的全部數據。
NSF 是否會將性取向問題從其其他科學勞動力調查中排除仍是一個尚未定案的問題。但弗里曼說，該機構將其排除在大學畢業生調查之外，然後再將其添加到其他 2023 年調查中則是不尋常的。
公眾必須在 1 月 14 日之前提交有關 NSF 調查數據收集計畫的評論。 然後，OMB 將有大約 30 天的時間審查 NCSES 的材料和所有公眾意見，之後它可以批准該計畫或要求該機構對其進行修改。doi: https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-023-00082-5
參考文獻：
1.Cech, E. A. & Waizunas, T. J. Sci. Adv. 7, eabe0933 (2021).
2.Cech, E. A. & Pham, M. V. Soc. Sci. 6, 12 (2017).
Researchers blast US agency’s decision not to collect LGBT+ data
Scientists call for the National Science Foundation to add a question about sexual orientation to its 2023 workforce surveys.
Max Kozlov / 13 January 2023 / Nature
Lockers in a rainbow of colours at the US National Science Foundation Ice Core Facility in Lakewood, Colorado.
Credit: Jim West/Alamy
The US National Science Foundation (NSF) has decided not to include a question about sexual orientation on one of its workforce surveys, setting off a social-media firestorm. More than 1,700 researchers have now signed an open letter urging the agency’s director to reconsider the decision. They argue that it is crucial to collect such information to understand the makeup of the scientific community and craft policies that lessen disparities for sexual minorities.
How LGBT+ scientists would like to be included and welcomed in STEM workplaces
The National Center for Science and Engineering Statistics (NCSES), a subdivision of the NSF, administers several surveys regularly that provide key data about the US scientific workforce to policymakers and researchers on demographics such as sex, race and ethnicity, scientific discipline and citizenship status. The NCSES has hinted for years that it was considering adding questions about sexual orientation and gender identity to its surveys, but delays have frustrated researchers.
In a 14 December filing with the US Office of Management and Budget (OMB), the NSF said it would include a two-part question about gender identity, but not a question about sexual orientation on its 2023 National Survey of College Graduates. Julia Milton, a spokesperson for NCSES, said in a statement that data-quality and privacy issues led the agency to exclude the sexual orientation question from the survey. The agency tested the questions during a pilot survey and concluded that the question led to more respondents quitting the survey and not responding to the query, compared with other queries.
Jon Freeman, a neuroscientist at Columbia University in New York City who authored the open letter, has been pushing the NSF to adopt such questions for years. He is not convinced by the agency’s rationale to exclude the sexual orientation question. The agency “justified this move with flawed analyses, inappropriate benchmarks and selective reporting of its own pilot data”, Freeman writes in the letter. Milton did not answer Nature’s questions about the allegations in the letter.
“It’s perplexing they would leave the sexual orientation question off, given that it’s been asked successfully for 10 years now” on surveys by other federal agencies, says Nancy Bates, a former US Census Bureau statistician who co-chaired a 2022 National Academies of Science, Engineering and Medicine consensus report on measuring sex, gender identity and sexual orientation.
The ‘gold standard’
The decision comes as some studies have suggested that LGBT+ people are underrepresented in the sciences and face more barriers and workplace harassment than non-LGBT+ people.
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NSF’s surveys are considered to be the “gold standard of data collection” on the scientific workforce, so this decision is highly consequential, Bates says. While Milton says that NCSES’s surveys do not have “bearing on the determination of eligibility for federal research funding”, Emma Wojtowicz, a spokesperson for the National Institutes of Health (NIH), says that some US agencies such as the NIH use data from the NSF’s workplace surveys to determine which groups are underrepresented and qualify for grants that promote diversity.
“If we don’t have the data to understand potential differences or disadvantages, the silence of the data itself reproduces inequality,” says Erin Cech, a sociologist at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor who studies LGBT+ representation in science and signed the letter. In June 2022, US President Joe Biden signed an executive order directing federal agencies to “advance the responsible and effective collection” of gender identity and sexual orientation data.
Survey design questions
To ensure that adding or revising questions on its surveys wouldn’t result in people quitting them or otherwise distorting the data collected, NCSES ran a pilot of its college graduates survey in 2021 with 5,000 respondents. It included both a gender identity and a sexual orientation question. In its submission to the OMB, the NCSES said it had concerns about how the sexual orientation question performed.
To fix LGBTQ+ disparities in science, we need the data
But the agency tested a strange version of the sexual orientation question, says Kerith Conron, research director at the Williams Institute in Los Angeles, a think tank that conducts research on sexual orientation and gender identity law and public policy. The question began with a phrase that Bates says might have confused people, and included more response options than are used in other federal surveys. “I’ve been around a long time, and I’ve never seen that question before,” Conron says. Milton responds that more expansive response options could “inform the broader federal government’s effort to measure and understand sexual minorities”.
Conron applauds the agency’s inclusion of a gender identity question, but says that it was a “fail on the part of NSF not to include more traditional measures of sexual orientation”. In the open letter, Freeman calls on the agency to release the full data of the pilot study.
Whether or not the NSF will exclude the sexual orientation question from its other scientific workforce surveys is an open question. Freeman says it would be unusual for the agency to exclude it from the college graduates survey and then add it for other 2023 surveys.
Members of the public have until 14 January to submit comments about the NSF’s data-collection plans for the survey. The OMB will then have about 30 days to review the NCSES’s materials and all public comments, after which it could either approve the plan or ask the agency to revise it.
doi: https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-023-00082-5
References
3.Cech, E. A. & Waizunas, T. J. Sci. Adv. 7, eabe0933 (2021).
4.Cech, E. A. & Pham, M. V. Soc. Sci. 6, 12 (2017).