A survey let people explain what "other" gender they were. It did not go as planned.

A window into the battle over gender vs. sex in open-ended survey responses

Earlier this week, I dug into the Cooperative Election Study (CES), a nationally representative survey of U.S. adults done every fall, to examine trends in nonbinary and transgender identities. From 2006 to 2020, the CES gave two options for its question about gender/sex: “male” and “female.”

Starting in 2021, the CES instead asked “What is your gender?” with four options: “Man,” “Woman,” “Non-binary,” and “Other.” When respondents chose “Other,” they could then type in the term of their choosing.

This did not go as planned.