Email from BBE this am: Dear Brass Banders, The University of Sheffield are researching the difference brass banding makes to a person. Once all stages of the research are complete, we hope to be able to share with bands data that will strengthen funding bids and help others understand the magic of brass bands. We'd therefore be very grateful if you could spend a few minutes answering the 5 questions. BRASS BAND SURVEY Please share this email with all band members and any brass band contacts that you can. The survey closes on September 12th. Thanks in advance for your help. The team at Brass Bands England
Done. I think the reason that there are several questions pinning down gender classification must be that there is a set survey recipe for doing so in that department/university/field. People who have anything more than the usual M/F to say are overall rare, and I would strongly suspect that they aren't enough of them in brass bands to provide statistically meaningful data to this survey even if all those active in banding responded and even if all their responses were lumped together into one 'not completely straightforward' pot. I reckon there's a redundant question in that section - I couldn't puzzle out the difference between "Is your present gender the same as the one you were assigned at birth?" and "Is your gender identity the same as the gender you were assigned at birth?", and, on checking with someone much more knowledgeable than me on the minutiae of this kind of thing, they couldn't either. A little bizarre. They also make several tests for 'not completely straightforward gender', but don't seek to discriminate any further detail on the subject. Having asked several questions about gender, plus the single questions on age and disability, I'm surprised that they omit a number of other useful category breakdowns that might aid their understanding of the results. Ethnicity, religious position, location, location history, precise age at which first banding, type of disability, sexuality (yes indeed Steve, they asked no questions about sexuality at all), whether banding is one's only musical interest or not, level of commitment to banding - there are quite a few possible avenues that might present interesting ideas to BBE on how to spread brass banding.
This reminded me of a time a few years ago when I volunteered on the organizing committee for a running event (simultaneously run 1/2 marathon; 10k; and 5k). The responses to the (then) usual single question: Sex? resulted in some interesting replies. "Not while running"; "Didn't know that was an option"; "Before or after the race?" were some that I can remember. Back on topic, while I might have been persuaded to complete this survey, I don't think I'll bother based on some of the preceding comments. With only five questions and apparently two or three on sexual orientation, it seems more than a little skewed to me. Or maybe it's a study on the sexual orientation of those involved in banding today!!
John, it's nothing of the kind, fear not. There's a page that asks you about your banding experience, a couple of pages that ask you to describe in detail benefits (physical, social, etc) of playing in banding for you, then a page of demographic classification questions - age, gender, disability. Sexual orientation isn't mentioned - different thing to gender.
What is your gender? If you prefer to use your own term for your gender, please write it here. Is your present gender the same as the one you were assigned at birth? Is your gender identity the same as the gender you were assigned at birth? but why would they want the above info ? mmmm, maybe theres grants for one eyed, one legged pre-op 2nd Baritone players ? No offence at all meant by the way.
They want the info so they can say "These were the results for women and these were the results for men. They're the same in such and such a way but different in such and such another way". I don't think they're going to extract enough data about less usual gender situations to deduce anything beyond the level of anecdote. Perhaps they want to know so that they don't accidentally include the results in either the M or the F breakdown. Thinking about it, that's probably the most likely answer.
Just to clarify, the survey has been designed, and is being carried out, by researchers at Uni of Sheffield. BBE and I have simply shared the link to help them get more responses.
I think the key is they won't know that there isn't enough data to make any reasonable deductions until they try and collect it. You can only analyse the data you have. And when their research is subject to academic rigours such as peer review, and someone asks why they didn't ask questions about nonbinary gender when they have asked about male/female, the reply 'but there aren't many nonbinary people in brass banding' just wouldn't hold its own. It is entirely possible that someone who 'identifies' as being female does not necessarily present as being female, so it may not seem on the surface that there are many people who identify as being a different gender from the one they were assigned at birth present in brass bands, but you wouldn't necessarily know, and that is the aim of sociological research- to find out. I don't think it's necessarily to 'weed' out the nonbinary respondents to enable a strict 'male/female' comparison, but more to get as much data as possible. It's also worth pointing out that this research is asking for qualitative data. Qualitative research in this manner is aimed at explaining social phenomena using the lived experiences of people. It isn't necessarily aiming to make statistical comparisons between one gender or the next, so even one nonbinary respondent will give insight, even if you can't make any generalisations from it. And then if there are no nonbinary respondents, the questions can then be asked as to why this isn't the case, maybe? They could certainly have asked about characteristics such as religion, sexuality, or even socio-economic background (which I think would be very interesting). But maybe that's not the aim of the research; that isn't the question the researchers are trying to answer. As for the difference between the two questions you ask about earlier, I don't know, and you'd think as a student social worker I would. But I have asked someone who might know, so I'll see what they say
I asked my friend, who is transgender, and she says that to her the two questions are the same, but she thinks because they're both in the same questionnaire, the first one effectively is asking whether you have had a sex change.
The transgender friend that I asked feared the same. I wonder also if it might seek to distinguish those that toddle back and forth. In either case, it's clumsily phrased.
Thanks for the feedback. It appears then, contrary to the initial post, that there are more than five questions (that added to my uncertainty). I'll go and have a look.
Thank you for sharing the link. I completed the survey and found some sensible questions about music making. It needn't take someone very long to complete (say less than ten minutes) and might produce some worthwhile results so I'd like to encourage others to complete it too. OK, besides the sensible ones there were a few other questions that seemed daft (to me) and some things that (to me) would have seemed sensible to ask were not included. I'm not too bothered about those flaws now (ideally any later survey questionaire will be improved) and just hope that the answers that they do get are helpful to banding.
The survey has obviously fallen down due to its inability to consider the Agender amongst us. As has apparently TMP which allows us to specify ourselves as Male, Female or Unspecified but not Agender. Where is the fairness in that?
