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Professional organizations in science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM)—including Optica, which publishes the Optics & Photonics News—work to support the science and well-being of their members. This typically includes improving the recruitment and retention (R&R) of researchers from underrepresented groups.
A new survey found, however, that these organizations are doing an insufficient job collecting necessary demographic data on their members, which could lead to less effective support for members in marginalized groups (Science, doi: 10.1126/science.abo1599). The paper’s authors present a number of recommendations for overcoming these problems, and fostering better support for these groups, in future surveys.
Know thy members
Professional STEM organizations offer various services to the science community, such as organizing meetings, publishing journals and advocating for research-friendly policies. One service is to improve researcher recruitment and retention from underrepresented groups by providing targeted professional development and networking opportunities.
But the organizations have to predicate the targeted efforts on knowing their constituents’ demographics. And to gain that knowledge, membership surveys need to include questions about the members’ identities such as race, ethnicity, gender identity and citizenship status. An insufficient data-harvesting effort could lead to viewing members largely as homogenous groups, instead of diverse collections of identities.
True diversity obscured
For their study, the US-based researchers asked 164 STEM organizations what kind of demographic data they collect from their members, what percentage of their members respond and how the organizations use the gathered data. The researchers received responses from 73 organizations, including Optica.
The researchers found that many surveys capture an incomplete picture of their members by failing to ask certain demographic questions. Less than 20 organizations gather information on their members’ sexual orientation or disability status—far fewer than the more than 60 organizations collecting data on race, ethnicity and gender identity. And the identity questions often offer a limited number of answer choices, which could reduce the response rate and hide distinctive identities.
“Cumulatively,” the researchers write, “these findings suggest that the bulk of professional organizations in STEM are not collecting demographic data that are representative of the true diversity within STEM, which misinforms any subsequent use of the data for supporting or guiding organizational operations such as R&R.”
Following in others’ footsteps
For STEM organizations to improve demographic surveys, the researchers recommend benchmarking against other large scale, well-done surveys, such as the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s National Health Interview Survey (NHIS), for question design, especially on the racial and ethnic identity, sexual orientation and disability status.
But the NHIS does not explicitly ask questions about gender or transgender identity. For those questions, the researchers suggest that STEM organizations model their surveys after the National Survey of Student Engagement by Indiana University, USA, or a survey from the National Center for Transgender Equality, a US-based advocacy group.
However, “inclusive survey questions and response options alone do not guarantee representative demographic data,” the researchers write. “Other aspects of surveys can prompt or prevent entire groups from responding, resulting in nonresponse biases.” To boost the response rate, they recommend ensuring anonymity, sending reminders, shortening the survey length and offering incentives to the members.
Though their recommendations are mostly for US-centric organizations, the researchers believe that the principles could be applied to international organizations as well. They suggest that organizations located outside of the United States identify large-scale, local surveys that gather and report meaningful data on general population and adapt questions and options from those surveys.