The US National Science Foundation is looking into adding questions about sexual orientation and gender identity to its Survey of Earned Doctorates, Science Careers reports. The survey, which is given to each year to new doctorate-holders, asks about their education backgrounds, demographics, and future plans to examine trends in doctoral education.
New York University's Jonathan Freeman, the University of California, Los Angeles' Adam Romero, and Laura Durso from the Center for American Progress, sent the agency a letter that argued for the inclusion of questions about sexual orientation and gender identity among science doctorate recipients. The trio says adding questions about sexual orientation and gender identity would provide data about LGBTQ representation in the sciences.
These data could then be used to gauge, for instance, the retention of LGBTQ individuals in STEM fields or whether they earn as much as their colleagues, the California Academy of Sciences' Lauren Esposito tells Science Careers. She notes, though, that some people may balk at providing data on about sexual orientation and gender identity to the government due to discrimination concerns.
Science Careers adds that the agency has started the process of adding questions to that survey, but, given the time it takes to test the questions, the earliest they could be included is 2021.