Course talk:PSYC305/2013ST2/ClassProject/5.5 Discussion - Future Research

Hi All,

Another bit I just thought about was gender differences in the diagnosis of mental disorders. Lippa talks about this in his book Gender, Nature and Nurture, and notes significant sex ratio differences in diagnoses of mood, substance, and sexual identity disorders among others (Lippa, 2005, p. 37). To be frank I am wary of contributing to a culture of diagnosis that suggests personality/mood/anxiety imbalances are disorders subject to labeling, and I believe we have to be careful about how the DSM-IV labels and interprets “disorders:” we have to keep in mind the DSM listed homosexuality as a disorder until 1973 (Herek, 2012, para. 17).

That said, the DSM allows us to tabulate ratios of empirically-collected data on the subject of the above disorders and that may be very helpful in a wider pursuit of gender comparisons.

I’m not sure we addressed the issue of mental health in our questionnaire; might this be something for future questionnaires?

i've taken evolution psychology before and i am pretty sure that gender has a great influence on mental disorders. for example, depression and eating disorders are mostly diagnosed in women. However, this could be due to men do not report themselves having mental disorders or admit that they have mental issues for some reasons. It's probably because of how the society views on men. Nevertheless, i think your suggestion is pretty good.

based on mental illness, i've thought about some possible future research topics 1. life expectancy 2. self-esteem (or happiness) 3. environmental adaptation (both physical and mental)

other topics could be -marital status -numbers of children

hopefully these are something that can be researched in the future.

hey ricky, youve made some great suggestions for future research. just wanted to let you know that i summarized an article from Lippa et al. (2000) in the gender studies section about masculinity and mortality. you might want to consider revising the second point under future research, as there has been some investigation into this relationship (gender and life expectancy).

How strong is the gender effect for the mental health conditions? Does the textbook give d values? All of the items that we included had d values of 1 or greater. This also reminds me that at least one of our questions seemed to tap into body image.

i actually do not know the d values, but i have the male:female ratio data from another textbook.for instance, the ratio of Autism of male:female is 4:1 (Brune, 2004) and the ratio of depression is female:male 2:1 (Brune, 2004)

Great info on this page, nice work! I'll look for more m/f mental health ratios as well.

Comer also mentions that "women are at least twice as likely as men to experience episodes of severe unipolar depression" (Comer, 2010, p. 242); females also account for 95% of diagnoses of anorexia nervosa (ibid, p. 342).

Also I was inspired by a chapter in the Lippa book Gender, Nature and Nurture and added a bit to the bottom of our page about the importance of careful question development in order to include wider demographics.

Comer mentions obsessive-compulsive disorder has a roughly equal distibution between males and females (Comer, 2010, p. 150). Women outnumber men 2 to 1 with regard to specific phobias (Comer, 2010, p. 135) and generalized anxiety disorder (Ibid, p. 123).

Also I'll reference the DSM IV-TR in case anyone wants to look further into the subject of mental disorders.

What is really cool with the phobias is that they appear to be socialized out of boys and into girls (by boys!) that both sexes are equally phobic until school age.

Not sure if it matters, but our course text suggests that as incidences of alcoholism are greater in males by the same factor, that male depressive symptoms may be masked.

I find it interesting that some mood disorders are more prevalent in females (i.e. borderline personality disorder - 3 times more prevalent in women than men!) while others are more prevalent in males (i.e. antisocial mood disorder). Why is it that certain mood disorders affect one gender more than the other?? BPD also results in more stereotypically "female" behaviours i.e. high emotionality, "neediness", eating disorders etc.. while antisocial results in increased criminal activity, being a "tough guy" i.e. having no real emotional responses, and increased aggression -- more sterotypically male behaviours. Could be a great topic for future research?

Kevin, I think you touch base in a very important and valid point: the medicalization of the genders, and I agree with you in the importance of exercising caution while interpreting the DSM.

As it was the case with homosexuality being categorized as a disorder (and now a days being more recognized as another sexual orientation), there could be many other orientations which are overlooked or categorized as disorders, because as a society, we are not ready to accept them for economic, political and religious reasons, for example.

Hi All,

I was thinking maybe one more possible future research can be tested on how men and women differ in stress level that is related to their personality. Although men and women tend to equalize the roles they play in the society nowadays, there is still a tendency that people think men needs to make more money for their family and women tends to take care of the family members. Different role play will result into different level and kinds of stress, which will make men and women have different personalities due to the difference in stress levels.

Any thoughts about this possible future research?

Hi Meiri, What you suggested is quite interesting. The effects of occupational and home stress on our well being (mental, physical, and social state) is something I learned about in health psychology, so it would be interesting to know if that kind of stress is related to gender and personality. We know that women and men already have different coping tendencies so it's quite possible there are differences involving stress perception between genders. I actually think we did have some stress related questions as part of the final questionnaire, but maybe if the these type of questions were more structured and researched, perhaps we could have found a correlation in our results (so the quality of the questions could be an area of improvement and a source of limitation) With that said though, I think confounding variables,directionality, and causation would be issues in the research since stress is such a huge topic in health already. Nevertheless, I think you've have made a really good and insightful suggestion !

Hi Meiri and Karen, I think that your ideas point out to something very interesting. There are several things that we could look at in terms of stress and personality/ gender; not only are coping strategies different and the work load for males and females different but also the types of jobs a male vs. female does will create more/less stress since some jobs may induce more stress than others. Although it is true that gender roles in terms of the workforce has become more equal, there are still certain occupations that are lacking in either males or females due to stereotypes. For example, although having women in the police force is growing more accepted, typically men are still found to be the officers. This brings up greater stress in men as they need to find ways to be the breadwinner in the family. However, there also might be more stress for women who do enter the police force since they need to live up to standards that are set for men. This might produce a different kind of stress on each gender, and so we could look at how this might come into play with their personality. So it seems like there are many different aspects of stress that we could look at in the future, connecting with gender/personality differences because of social norms.

Great discussions here!

I just wanted to throw in a bit about causal relationships. Lippa’s Gender, Nature and Nurture has an excellent page on this and I think it can be viewed online. It is a table entitled “Parallel tracks of gender development and their complex interactions” (Lippa, 2005, p. 220) It is an excellent graphic depiction illustrating why causality is so difficult to infer, especially from single studies, GD or otherwise. I mention this because it may also inspire new ideas for GD studies.

Hi Karen, Phoebe and Kevin,

These are all great points to consider for the future study! I totally agree that coping strategies are also really important dealing with stress, if stress level is hard to test it out, the corresponding coping strategies people adapt can be a great future study to associate with personality. Another thing to keep in mind is that women nowadays have accepted to work as equally as men, but they also play an important role at home, this can possibly bring up the role conflict to increase stress levels for women as there is way too much for them to handle. Overall i think coping strategies are a idea to think about!

There are many types of stress, occupational stress is one of the important stress both men and women experience everyday, so I think it is a great type of stress to study for future research. However, although women tend to work equally in today's society as men, some women still do no work; this brings up a limitation which we can only study women with a job for occupational stress. Nevertheless it is a good future research to conduct.

Great idea. How might the new Gender Diagnosticity scale we've designed help here? do you think asking about gender diagnosticity might tell us more about people's response to stress than just asking their gender itself?

I think it might tell us something about their response in a more subconscious level since the items might not be directly addressing their stressful situation or coping strategies. I believe it might be seen as a projective test measuring gender difference to stressors, which we learned in class has its pros and cons.

Hi all, definitely some good suggestions here. Most of these areas haven't looked at previously Gender Diagnositicity. To take this discussion to the next level, why would looking at how Gender Diagnosticity relates to these things be an improvement on what's already been done. Like the study which found that Gender Diagnosticity was a stronger predictor than gender on bullying, we might also find the gender diagnosticity trait we're measuring a stronger predictor of these mental health concerns.

As I mentioned in the previous section, it would be good to sort these into suggestions that go together as well and format these as paragraphs.

For the MBA Income Attainment study, GD (masculinity defined as a preference for an organizational culture high on aggressiveness and low on supportivness, and femininity was vice versa) was found to only be correlated with initial occupational success, while a third factor, effort, was responsible for long-term success.

For the Gender-Related Traits of Heterosexual and Homosexual Men and Women study, it was found that a heterosexual-homosexual diagnosticity was just was good as GD in determining occupational preferences.

The MBA study stated that gender gaps in income were attributable to more hours worked (effort) by men than women in the long-run. However, all of the participants were in a commerce program and worked in commerce. Comparing this to the second study, women and gay men are more likely to prefer more female-typical occupations in fields, the majority of which are lower-paying than the male-typical occupations preferred by men and lesbian women. What I'm getting at is that in terms of occupational success, GD can be a strong predictor of income, but only when you compare genders within the same field.

With our Gender Diagnosticity, we may be able to similarly predict how successful an individual, say, a student, may be compared to his or her peers in his or her first years of work in the field better than GPA. Granted, this would be limited to a short-term prediction. I think this could have some implications on future research; to compare GD to GPA, teamwork/interpersonal skills, SES/background, or even educational attainment itself. Thoughts?

In (Lippa and Connelly, 1990) they mention that gender diagnosticity is not tied to normative samples - and that "most fundamentally, the metric of individual differences yielded by the method of gender diagnosticity is quite different from those operationally defined by traditional scales," and that "they have rich interpretations as probabilities and may possess psychometric properties different from conventional personality measures." They go on to say that studying the psychometric properties of gender diagnosticity measures is "a fruitful direction for further investigation." Should we discuss this in this section?

Could you explain the psychometric properties of GD measures? I'm still not entirely sure what that means in terms of that study/our future research. Thanks!

Hello all, I have added some info to this page regarding reliability and the need for further assessment to properly confirm/disprove reliability. If anyone has the chance to read through it or make edits if necessary I would really appreciate it. Thanks!

I have amended the passage in order to make it more direct and concise. I have taken what I understood to be the root idea of the original passage and then added what I see as a key element, namely the opportunity to separate factors related to mental and physical health into distinct “gender” and “biological sex” categories. My reasoning is that there is often a logical error that occurs when research points to the propensity of women or men to develop certain diseases or disorders. The error is that a statistical difference between men and women is usually assumed as the result of inherent genetic differences, while the broad category of socially constructed gender differences is ignored.

This is the reliability and validity of the measures and that is a big part of what this article has been about. Nevertheless, future research on this topic would be advantageous.

Hi everyone,

SunnyZHENG and I have been discussing GD applied to the homosexual community in the Future Research: Improvements thread and I thought it would be easier to discuss and navigate through the various nested posts if we just made a separate entry.

Here's an outline of what we've been discussing so far:

• I summarized a study that looked at heterosexual and homosexual men and women: http://wiki.ubc.ca/Course:PSYC305/2013ST2/ClassProject/2.2.1_Introduction_-_GD_Studies#Gender-Related_Traits_of_Heterosexual_and_Homosexual_Men_and_Women
• The same occupational preferences that distinguish men from women are the same that distinguish heterosexual men from gay men and lesbian women from heterosexual women.
• Lesbian women are more likely than heterosexual women to be self-ascribed as masculine, while gay men are more likely than heterosexual men to be self-ascribed as masculine.
• From the study: "In absolute terms, the mean GD scores for gay men (0.51) and for lesbians (0.55) indicated that both groups, on average, had neither strongly male- nor female-typical occupational pref- erences. That is, both group means were near the mid- point of possible GD scores (i.e., 0.50)."
  • So since the differences between the homosexual and heterosexual community are offset by the average scores as a whole, they're not skewed.
• SunnyZHENG suggested that "in further studies, researchers might examine GD of homosexualities based on opposite sexes because participants’ sexual orientations and gender identities role in society do really effect the reliability of GD in this research. For future research, participants can be equal sample size of Lesbians and gays, maybe the same method to test the masculine and feminine extents of gay men and lesbian women (or do you have a better way to examine?). Do you agree or any advise?"

My response: I agree that a separate sample size of the homosexual community can and should be examined for insights on areas other than occupational preferences. However, what I'm wondering is how it would be any different if they were in the entire pool of participants (homosexual, transexual, heterosexual, asexual) or not since they are not skewing the results. In other words, I don't think it's affecting the reliability because reliability is based on how accurate the score is (eg. gender diagnosis, or IQ), and GD seems to be accurately identifying self-ascribed masculinity or femininity of an individual, regardless of sexual orientation.

HOWEVER, it's a different story when you apply GD as a predictor of other aspects of life, such as bullying or mental health (also discussed in the "Other GD Studies" section). Do you think GD (eg. A gay man with a feminine profile) would be a stronger predictor of an individual being subject to bullying or prone to mental health issues than other predictors?

OH! Also, if we're going to discuss GD in the homosexual community, how about future research in strictly gay men or lesbian women. In a similar example, do you think a gay man with a feminine profile would be more likely to suffer mental health issues or be subject to bullying over more a masculine gay man?

hi, looks like all really good information. If I'm following correctly are you saying because our biological sex doesnt necessarily predict our sexual orientation that in future studies we should include a standardized GD score?

I think this would present some really interesting trends. I also think it would show more accurate results. For example if a female identifies herself as a lesbian and also shows a more masculine score than her results of this questionnaire would be representing a different correlation with the results than compared to a women that identifies herself as heterosexual and scores higher on the feminine side.

Schuolee have you added your information into the page?

I think a standardized and universal GD should be what we're striving for, but what SunnyZHENG and I were considering for future research was looking at smaller populations, such as the homosexual community, or even narrower, a subset of that community (Eg. gay men).

I'd like to hear other people's input on how examining homosexual populations would be different from heterosexual populations. Because if there's no difference, then it doesn't really open up possibilities for future research, but if there is, then it does!

I haven't added this information to the page yet, as I'd like to hear everyone else's input. Hopefully we'll get more responses by Tuesday!

Ok reading over your summary of the study done by Lippa (2002)I completely agree that GD scores should be included in a future research of this type, because GD scores are different within the same genders and they are represented differently within the same sexual orientations. I would say for future research instead of seperating out a small subtype that there is a mixture as you previously mentioned of (transgender, homosexual and heterosexual orientations) that way we can compare the trends between genders and then compare trends based on GD. Does this make sense? I could find another reference supporting the importance of including GD scores?

Also are we going to include in this page just how GD scores can be predictors of other aspects in life outcomes (ie. bullying)or are we focusing on how GD scores of homosexuals could change the results in occupation, activites, life outcomes, etc.

Could you clarify your point on comparing trends between genders and comparing trends based on GD?

The reason we were discussing examining the homosexual community separately was because GD may prove to be better indicators of mental health for homosexual individuals; gay men especially (as mentioned below). If we were to consolidate all sexual orientations, do you think key insights would be buried since both homosexual groups in the Heterosexual/Homosexual Gender Traits study averaged out?

I think it is worth reiterating the importance of GD as predictors of other aspects of life outcomes. I know it's mentioned in the studies, but I'm not entirely sure where else it is explicitly stated that GD can predict certain life outcomes, such as bullying and mental health. Anybody know?

Hi Schuolee,

good work! You've organized the topic and developed further. Yes we can narrow the sample size, not only in homosexual community, but specify different roles in both gay and lesbian. That is, separate participants into four groups: butches (masculine lesbians), flamers (gay men who are more femme), femme(feminine lesbian) and masculine gay men. [I don't know whether these slangs are right or I write them in a polite way, I just Google..If so, I apologize...] For example, participants are the equal sample size of Lesbians and gays. Researchers can test the masculine extent both in butches (masculine lesbians) and flamers (gay men who are more femme), to identity whether the butch is more masculine than the flamer or not. Thus, researchers can both test same-sex homosexual and opposite-sex homosexual, and then compared with the data of same-sex and opposite-sex heterosexualities.

Previous studies support the stereotypes that gay men are more feminine than heterosexual men, and lesbian women are more masculine than heterosexual women (Kite & Deaux, 1984). Thinking, for example, that gay men look more effeminate than straight men and lesbian women look more masculine than straight women.

Hey SunnyZHENG,

I wrote a possible entry to the Future Research article below. Narrowing the sample size and looking at specific subsets of the community is a great idea. I think a standardized GD (As mentioned by NicolaVanderliek) paired with narrow focus/small population is much more effective at uncovering any insights that may be "buried" through averages when using large populations/samples.

Hi Schuolee, I believe that GD would be a strong predictor of bullying and/or mental health issues. In a society where heterosexualism is the norm, those who are different are more prone to stigmatization. This stigmatization leads to the idea known as minority stress, which is the conceptualization of internalized homophobia, stigma, and discrimination (Meyer, 1995, p. 38).

Thanks for bringing in that supporting evidence, CalvinChan! AmandaYuen did an excellent job of summarizing a study that examined bullying (http://wiki.ubc.ca/Course:PSYC305/2013ST2/ClassProject/2.2.1_Introduction_-_GD_Studies#Gender-Atypical_Behaviour_and_Adolescent_Bullying), which fits very well with the point you're getting at.

In the Adolescent Bullying study, it was found that gender atypical males were more subject to bullying than gender atypical females. Minority stress is a bigger issue for men than women. Given that there is so much stigmatization re: violating gender norms, future research could perhaps examine the differences between bullying/mental health of feminine heterosexual men and feminine gay men?

I think we're starting to develop some good ideas and contributions for the Future Research entry!

Hi CalvinChan and Schuolee, I took this paragraph from this page of the report (future research): Since the exact classification of behaviours and traits into masculine and feminine has been and remains a “subject of some debate” (Smiler & Epstein, 2010, p.150) among the academic community, while the link between gender identity and biological sex is being constantly challenged by the representations of gender fluidity, it could be useful to explore options beyond the binary. These options may include dispensing with both strict divisions rooted in dichotomy and a scale of binary characteristics, given that there is already a lack of consensus in terms of deciding which of these better reflects reality (Larsen & Buss, 2009; Lippa & Connelly, 1990; Smiler & Epstein, 2010). Instead, future research might look into classifying divisions into a corresponding array of gender identities and representations

Is this similiar to what we are talking about? Should we maybe just add on to it with your study that you found Schuolee and maybe some other references, basing it off of the last line in that paragraph that future research should look into classifying divisions

I think that's a good transition; from fluidity of gender identities to GD for various sexual orientations. Thanks for pointing that out!

Definitely a great topic for discussion. I read in another article about lesbian, gay, and bisexual individuals (LGB) that the majority of their stress comes from concealing their sexual orientation. Future research can also be conducted on how these GD affect HOW LSBs mask their orientation. I'm not sure if I'm phrasing that correctly, so I'll put an example.

How would a lesbian women act to conceal their sexual orientation vs how would a gay man act to conceal their sexual orientation?

Hopefully that clarified it.

CalvinChan, do you have a link to that study so we can cite it? That's a fantastic point, thanks for bring it up. That also ties into coping methods, which is mentioned in point 3 of Future Research.

To summarize, what we have so far/a potential entry to the actual post:

As outlined in the Gender-Related Traits of Heterosexual and Homosexual Men and Women study (Lippa, 2002), the occupational preferences that distinguished men from women also distinguished lesbian women from gay men. A narrower focus on the homosexual community, or even a subset of the community (eg. gay men, or lesbian women), could identify GD as a strong predictor of subjection to bullying, coping styles, and likelihood of mental illness for homosexual individuals.

People who deviate from socially-constructed, heterosexual gender roles are prone to stigmatization. This stigmatization leads to minority stress, which is the conceptualization of internalized homophobia, stigma, and discrimination (Meyer, 1995, p. 38). Future research could be conducted to examine how GD is related to bullying for gay and lesbian individuals. Since individuals will differ in their response to bullying, we may go on to investigate how GD affects coping styles in cases of homophobia. One response to homophobia may be concealing one's sexual orientation. (Study Name/Researcher) has found that the majority of lesbian, gay, and bisexual (LGB) individuals' stress comes from concealing their sexual orientation. We could look into how GD affects the ways homosexual individuals conceal their sexual orientation.

As stated above, gender and personality can be predictors of mental illness. Because of the increased likelihood of stigmatization, we can also study the LGB community separately to identify differences or trends in prevalence of mental illnesses due to stress or maladaptive coping methods.

This is good, could we include in first paragraph not only occupational preferences that distinguish men from women or lesbian women from gay men but also perhaps female heterosexuals compared to female homosexuals and heterosexuals males compared to homosexual males. I'm not sure if that is extending it too much but I thought we were trying to say the purpose of GD scores is important because results from this study are not as reliable if we only compare different genders but to be more specific and find variability between GD score and sexual orientation with question responses for more accurate results.

Also is this the first time GD is mentioned in this page? we may have to for the first time mentioned use the full word ie. Gender Diagnosticity.

Nice work all, and you're getting directly at the points I made in the other discussion forum thread.

Hi all, great work getting this page started and formatted it looks great! However, one of my main concerns for this page is that I feel we've lacked examining the previous Gender Diagnosticity scales and how we can improve on them. I think that the examples everyone provided were really strong and well thought out, but my questions are concerned how can we improve upon the scales, rather than specific topics. I think if we understand how we can improve the scales then we can include some of those specific topic examples to guide us. Moving forward, Smiler et al. (2010) has noted that Lewin (1994) found that "gender was unclear [after] several decades of theory and research".

Noting this, in Smiler et al. (2010) future research displays that there are conceptual issues as well as methodological ones with the previous scales, such as how labeling or interpreting a scale to be more "masculine" or "feminine" (this is directly from the article), as well as how old the scales are (in the case of the BRSI & PAQ). In our case, we have an up to date scale, as well as one that is generally culturally specific, but I think that a good future research topic should be concerned with validating our scale. Thus, we can show that with the use of mental health disorders (or any of the other examples) we can validate our scale by showing how some different levels of personality dispositions are found to be more strongly correlated with either women or men and this can be correlated to disorders, thus proving whether or scale was actually valid. Another aspect that I feel should be measured with future research is the reliability of our scale since we were unable to repeat the measure (but this would more so be a limitation). Our future research should also include a better sample of the population one that it more representative of all genders. Improving the reliability and validity.

Thoughts about how we can improve our own limitations in future research? As well as improve upon the limitations of others?

Hi Kristi,

I have the same concerns you do. One of my main concerns is how representative our scale is of the population. As you noted Smiler et al. (2010) was concerned about how the scale is interpreted to be more "masculine" or feminine" and due to our sample consisting mainly of females this concern should be addressed in our revised scale as well.

In future research I think it is crucial to considered an appropriate sample size as well as a representative population. We are determining gender diagnosticity and therefore our sample should include an equal, or close to equal sample of BOTH males and females. At the moment our scale is biased to a female population which puts into question the reliability of our scale. If the scale was to be used on a repeated measures study a more representative sample of genders and diversity would possibly yield different results. This therefore discards the validity of our scale due to the scale not measuring what it claims to measure.

When determining possible future research it is crucial to refer to the limitations of our scale. In order to generate a more accurate, reliable, and valid scale, the limitations should be addressed and resolved. The less limitations presented the better the accuracy of our scale. Once a majority of the limitations are addressed and presented within an improved scale one can be more certain that you are controlling for confounding variables and biased results. As mentioned above by myself and Kristi a crucial bias that should be controlled for is the lack of representativeness of males in our sample.

Great points, and I definitely agree. Also, was our method for developing a GD scale the best way to go about it? I think there were some good things about the way we did it, but perhaps some things that could be improved as well for future research.

Hi all, I would like to address again the importance of addressing the limitations of this study in order to provide solutions for future research. When considering future research you are considering the possible improvements that you can make to the study in order to increase both the reliability as well as the validity of the study. Below, I have reworded a couple of the limitations that have been collaborated by the class, and included possible resolutions to these limitations which could aid us in future research.

As mentioned, the overlapping limitation of this study was that a self-report was the only procedure of measurement utilized. Although the use of a self-reports provides ease as well as well as access to information that is reserved only by the individual, its limitations should be considered and the study should be revised for future research. Through the revision of the limitations which this study was hindered by, one is able to develop a better and more accurate study through which gender diagnosticity can be examined. The limitations that should be considered in future research are as follows:

1. When questionnaires ask questions which are private for a particular individual, that individual may respond in a “socially desirable” manner instead of truthfully. To answer a questionnaire in a socially desirable manner is also known as faking good. There are however possible solutions to this limitation that could be considered in future research. It is important to note however that anonymous questionnaires don’t often pose the problem of individuals answering truthfully due to the privacy of the individual being assured.

• One way in which one is able to overcome the problem of individuals answering the questionnaire in a socially desirable manner is to impose a “faking good profile” (Larsen & Buss 2010). This profile is constructed to use in comparison to the responses of an individual to determine whether he or she is “faking good.”

2. This study was representative of ethnicity, religious belief, level of education, and personality, but lacked in the representation of gender. The ratio of individuals who reported their genders were 10 males to 50 females. Due to the limitation of equal gender representation this study is only reliable when distributed to a higher population of BOTH females to males. Due to the lack in reliability and due to the study not measuring what it claims to measure, this study cannot be claimed as reliable or valid.

• In order to define this study as both valid and reliable we need to consider two things 1) that the study measures what it claims to be measuring (validity), and 2) that the study will yield the same results when tested on other populations or sample groups (reliability)
• these two points can be resolved by a sample size that is 1) not biased (for example the sample should not consist of the psychology students constructing the study) 2) representative of both females and males (equal or close to equal number of males and females within the sample) 3) randomly selected to control for other factors such as ethnicity, religious beliefs, educational level, etc.

The first step in future research is resolving these as well as other limitations to the current scale. Once the limitations have been resolved the many interesting and important factors that everyone has suggested could be researched in the future. Once you have a reliable and valid scale on which gender diagnosticity can be measured one will be able to add specific measures to investigate, such as how “gender and personality traits may have great influences on mental disorders,” or determining the correlation between “life expectancy[,] gender and personality traits,” and the rest of the suggestions which have been contributed to this page.

Hi everyone, As mentioned before, an aspect of future research that should be considered is how to revise a study in order to raise its validity and reliability, which will give us more accurate results. I have some additional ideas on solutions to fixing the limitations that were mentioned by GennaFerreira.

1. Solutions to reduce social desirability I found the following methods in the following article: Nederhof, A. (1985). Methods of coping with social desirability bias: A review. European Journal of Social Psychology, 15, 263-280.

• Neutral Questions
  • We should try to make questions that are as neutral as possible, so that it may not be seen as something that a person should answer in a specific way (a socially desirable way) by many different social groups.
• The Bogus Pipeline
  • Participants are told that either an attitude or emotion is being analyzed by a machine, or by a polygraph. However, the wires that are attached to the participant are not real. Since the participant does not know this, they will most likely answer the questions honestly.

2. Solutions to having a more valid and reliable study

• The sample size needs to be much larger; having a few hundred will be more effective than having less than a hundred. This will help eliminate individual differences. Moreover, by having a larger sample, we will be able to have a more equal number of females to males.
• As GennaFerreira mentioned, having random sampling will create less differences between individuals. Therefore, we should be using the random sampling technique to include not only Psychology students but the general public as well.
• In order to increase reliability, this questionnaire should be distributed more times to different samples to see if the results are still the same between different groups (ex. between students, parents etc.). We can also ask multiple questions about the same idea, in order to see if participants are answering it in the same way throughout the questionnaire (I believe we did have a few of these throughout the questionnaire).

3. Solutions to Experimenter/Confirmation Bias and Content

The overarching solution to confirmation bias/content is to develop questions from different perspectives (as in, consider culture, geographic location, SES, age/cohorts, etc) to provide the most objective, all-encompassing questionnaire. The questions were presumably developed by individual students. Although there was some convergence in ideas, the questionnaire could have been streamlined more efficiently. Instead, we could develop questions using either (1) a panel consensus method, where questions are considered as a group or (2) a structured delphi method, where individuals in a panel develop their own questions, which are then consolidated and refined repeatedly until ideas are stabilized and the questionnaire is where we want it to be (eg. objective, representative of different perspectives, provides a variety of possible responses).

4. Language

Aside from translating the questionnaire to multiple languages, I think either question development method as mentioned above could potentially address the language barrier and English comprehension issue.

Objectivity also plays into the neutrality of the questions, as PhoebeDychinco stated would address the social desirability/negative connotations issue.

Hi Jaimie,

when I read Genna's ideas about "when determining gender diagnosticity and therefore our sample should include an equal, or close to equal sample of BOTH males and females." I was wondering does sexual orientation effect the results of gender diagnosticity? That is to say, the more "masculine" role in Lesbian couple, compared with the more "feminine" role in Gay couple? Is this a related part need to be concerned in future research?

Hi SunnyZHENG,

I was hoping someone would bring this up! I summarized a study that looked at heterosexual and homosexual men and women: http://wiki.ubc.ca/Course:PSYC305/2013ST2/ClassProject/2.2.1_Introduction_-_GD_Studies#Gender-Related_Traits_of_Heterosexual_and_Homosexual_Men_and_Women

The same occupational preferences that distinguish men from women are the same that distinguish heterosexual men from gay men and lesbian women from heterosexual women. So yes, lesbian women are more likely than heterosexual women to be self-ascribed as masculine, while gay men are more likely than heterosexual men to be self-ascribed as masculine. I'm not entirely certain whether or not their responses would skew the overall results, but I do think it is relevant for future research.

I was reading over my notes/text book from my human sexuality class, which states that gay men and lesbian women are overrepresented in certain occupational areas (the creative arts, and professional sports, respectively). Do you think that a GD or homosexuality-heterosexuality diagnosticity (which was also shown to be just as effective in the same study), would be a stronger predictor of over- or under-representation of the homosexual community over other demographic factors such as educational attainment, SES, or background?

Hi Schuolee,

thanks for your reply and guide me to the related previous studies on sexual orientation and gender-related traits. Firstly, I have to say I have read an article that states many women become homosexual due to genetics. There still have gender differences on homosexual heredity, which may be applied to study homosexual community as you stated above.

Ok, so back to the topic. "Previous studies found that gay men are more feminine than heterosexual men, while lesbian women are more masculine than heterosexual women (Dunne, Bailey, Kirk, & Martin, 2000; Haslam, 1997; Lippa, 2000; Pillard, 1991)." - quote from "GD Studies". As seen, previous research studies the extent of masculine and feminine of the same sex/gender, but how about on opposite sex? For instance, we can compare the masculine or feminine behaviours and cognitions of lesbian women with gay men. What do you think?

I really find this topic interesting. Looking back at the results, it appeared that some of the strongest d values correlated with sexual behaviours and mate-selection tasks, as opposed to less strong relations between GD and occupational preferences. Some research on evolutionary psychology has been looking at the psychological mechanisms underlying males and females that may drive our behaviour. If we can relate this to GD scales, it could be really interesting- especially because the correlations for both men and women were so high in a number of categories.

DorothyNeufeld, Sexual behaviour/mate selection and evolutionary theory is an area I'd really like to discuss re: future research, but wasn't sure how to integrate it with our GD findings. If you have any ideas you'd like to like to discuss, I'm completely open to starting a new thread for this on the discussion board!

Not entirely sure if I'm going in the right direction, but I'm just going to throw out some ideas. I'd love to hear your thoughts. - In terms of Attraction: Hyper-masculine and hyper-feminine (the extremes) faces are regarded as more attractive than faces that are more androgynous. Would "hyper-feminine activities" predict the degree of an woman's attractiveness? (Eg. would a woman who enjoys putting on makeup be rated more physically attractive than a woman who enjoys modifying cars?) - Are the "extremes" also "extremes" in terms of masculinity/femininity? (eg. does a hyper-masculine-looking man have a hyper-masculine profile?) - Gender-based scripts in terms of dating - Gender differences in commitment/fidelity - Fluidity of sexual orientation - Successfulness of a relationship in heterosexual couples (gender as a barrier to communication)

Hi Schuolee,

Thanks, I wasn't entirely sure where exactly to reply, I agree it is somewhat unrelated! I found that the behaviours, like wearing-make up and carrying a purse were more gender-typical behaviours, as opposed to what each found attractive. More like a distinction between personal behaviours and personal interests in others. I see where you're going, does wearing makeup assume hyper-femininity in a woman? Not necessarily, I would think, does this behaviour span across males who identify as women- I feel like it doesn't happen as often, despite expressing some other behaviours and interests which appear very feminine. I still feel like wearing make-up specifically, is still socially constrained to women (unfortunately), with exceptions of some violating this social norm (as Jamie Veale pointed out in an earlier thread I believe). I feel like there is a distinction between gender-typical sexual behaviours, which may be more deeply rooted in a male or female nature as opposed to behaviours or occupational preferences which tend to be defined as feminine or masculine at a given time. Sexual behaviours, for adaptive purposes (maybe) may have a longer-lasting imprint on our identified gender. This may be a leap, but it could be interesting. I wasn't sure what you meant in fluidity of sexual-orientation- Successfulness of a relationship in heterosexual couples (gender as a barrier to communication)?

Hi again Schoulee,

I did some further research suggestions on vocational preferences, as an area this study could further examine as it isnt consistent with previous studies that do show a significant relationship between GD and occupational preferences. Added some suggestions in how our study could add new dimensions perhaps to find more in depth correlations between the two.

I like where you're going with the idea sexual behaviour is more deeply engrained in our identified gender. At least, definitely more so than activities such as putting on makeup.

Regarding fluidity of sexual orientation, I was getting at whether or not GD could be predictive of increased likelihood bisexual behaviour. Studies have shown that women, more than men, are more fluid in their sexuality (More women report bisexual experiences than men), but there are more reported homosexual men than homosexual women.

Regarding relationship success, I was considering the possibility that gender differences in communication may affect relationships, but I realized earlier that there is a section on marital status in this posting.

Great work on the Occupational Interests section! Really well-written.

Thanks, actually the areas of bisexuality and its fluidity interests really interests me too, I heard similar things about it being more fluid among women, I wonder why this is. I had no idea there were differences in more reports of homosexual men than women. Great topic. Would be interesting to examine. I appreciate the editing! It looks clear.

I agree with DorothyNeufeld, that a lot of the questions on our scale are socially constructed to be masculine or feminine. There is nothing inherently feminine about make-up or a purse - it's just what our society makes of it. As Schoulee rightly points out, some of the other sexuality-related variables may have some biological explanation - although I still believe these will be influenced by psychological and social factors.

From an evolutionary perspective though, it seems there is diversity in gender-related personality traits within genders (we know from the sexual orientation studies). The textbook discussion on the evolutionary reasons for the differences in the Big-5 traits is relevant here - is it adaptive to as a society have different levels of gender-typed personality. Perhaps from an evolutionary perspective it is adaptive to have a minority of people who are gender atypical to help "bridge the divide" among the sexes and help with a society to have more harmony.

Hi everyone,

I've split up the paragraphs of "Future Research" so that it is easier to navigate and read through. I had to make minor changes to the content, hope you're all okay with the changes.

I'm also going to include the possible solutions to our limitations/how we can improve our measures, as pointed out by KristiBahnman, GennaFerreira, and PhoebeDychinco.

Hi all,

when I read Genna's ideas on "when determining gender diagnosticity and therefore our sample should include an equal, or close to equal sample of BOTH males and females", I was wondering does sexual orientation effect the results of gender diagnosticity? That is to say, when compared a butch (a masculine lesbian) with a flamer (gay men who are more femme), is the butch more masculine on both behaviours and thoughts than the flamer? As well as when we compared a femme (a feminine Lesbian) with a butch, or even with a flamer, is the femme much more feminine than butch and flamer? I think when we collect the data and analyze the results, this might be a factor that should be concerned..

In one study, researchers find that tomboy as a gendered social identity can provide masculine-typed behavior in girls and women, and can be a protective Identity (Craig & LaCroix, 2011). In my view, when to determine gender diagnosticity we need also consider the participants sexual oritation and gender identity role in society.

However, is this a limitation of this research, or a further discussed topic related to gender diagnosticity? Any thought or help? Thanks.

Hi all, one might consider defining marital status and number of children had as combinations of the big five variables. I think that the topic of combinations of the big five variables would be an important topic for future research to investigate. Thoughts?

Hey Genna, I think that's a great idea! I'm looking at the course text right now and In Chapter 3 p.85 they talk about combinations of the Big Five variables, and how these combinations are better predictors of life outcomes such as marital status, and number or children when considered together, than when presented on their own. Perhaps in the future research it should be included about how these combinations of factors contribute to such outcomes. We could even consider that because women are higher on one trait than a man or vice versa, this is why there is more apparent difference when considering predicting things such as mental health disorders.

Hi all, some good ideas here - and you're right it is definitely an important topic for future research. Make sure it is linked in the topic of the paper though!

Hi Genna and Kristi,

I also recall learning that a child's temperament can really predict their future life outcomes and what kind of personality they will have when they grow up. Maybe future research can see if male and females can perform just as well, if not better in role reversals. For example, the wife going out to work while the husband took care of the children or the wife fixes the car, while the husband cooks dinner. I feel that examining each of the Big 5 variables in this way would be quite interesting!