Political identity, gender identity or both? The political effects of sexual orientation and gender identity items in survey research

Abstract

Issues arising from the measurement of gender identity on surveys have received scant attention from survey methodologists. We make use of three studies (two in the US and one in Mexico) to look at the effects of asking about gender identity on downstream measurements of political party affiliation. In all three studies, we show a significant impact of priming respondents to think about gender identity on expressed political identity. In two of the studies, we also find conditional effects based on the predispositions of respondents, and we find throughout that these effects are much stronger for men than for women.