The 2017 Design Salary Survey Is Officially Live
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Accounting for non-binary people doesn't even require a huge dropdown or open field, just add "Other" if you don't want to deal with it.
This isn't some fringe SJW cause, it's just a best practice for surveys if you want accurate data. [0][1][2]
It's not even about people's "feelings" or being "triggered", it's just about maintaining data integrity.
Not giving non-binary people the option to identify correctly, just leaves you with people who don't identity as male, and who aren't treated as male, being recorded as male. You're also making it much more likely for them to close the survey outright.
If, for example, non-binary people are underpaid, a survey designed this way would skew upwards, and misrepresent the average salary for all designers. It can also mess up your analysis of gender differences entirely, which presumably is the point of asking the question at all. If there is a gendered pay gap for designers, and non-binary people are sorted at random into male and female, any gap that does exist will be minimized.
[0] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Survey_best_practices#Sex.2F... [1] https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/the-science-behind-beha... [2] http://www.hrc.org/resources/collecting-transgender-inclusiv...
Sometimes you want someone's weight, not what weight they identify as.
In general, though, chromosomal abnormalities make lines based on the presence or absence of particular chromosomes seem arbitrary.
I get that you're trying to simplify this by drawing a bright line. I'm sympathetic to that urge. Quick and easy sorting systems are often the most useful approach, even if there are a few false sorts on the margins.
But the goal is not always to get as bright a line as possible. Sometimes there are other considerations that are more important, like as GP noted, trying not to bias survey participation.
EDIT: Tone.