QSAGE
Our "Big Two": Gender and Sexuality and Associated Intra- and Interpersonal Experiences as Our Foci within Human Behavior
Our lab's research focuses on gender and sexual identity in United States culture. We approach each of these social categories as research domains from the complementary perspectives of self-perception (viz. identity dynamics) and social perception (viz. the perception of these categories by others who are not the self). Though traditionally treated as different topics within social psychology, our lab combines these foci under the “experiences” term (which importantly, is similar to approaches taken by personality psychologists). This combination-focus ultimately provides the letters of the lab's name as the acronym SAGE (Sexuality And Gender Experiences). The "Quant" abbreviation is to showcase that we focus explicitly--and almost exclusively--on trying to create quantitative methods and modeling of all aspects of gender and sexuality. However, we recognize from the outset that both quantitative and qualitative methods are equally important and valid ways of knowing and doing empirical science. Thus, we are only noting our focus in dividing the intellectual labor. We hope our quantitative approach complements existing qualitative approaches to sexuality and gender topics and provides more tools to faciliate mixed methods approaches in all fields.
Adding a layer of complexity to our research approach, we use nomological networks (aka nomonets) to organize and understand the various subtopics and referents within the broad terms of both "gender" and "sexuality." These subtopics or referents become separable analytic objects (approachable from either a qualitative or quantitative perspective) within each topic. For "gender," we use the BIRDS nomonet. Each letter in the acronym BIRDS stands for a separable referent to which gender has been assigned in scholarship: B for (all) Biology; I for (all) aspects of Identity as Identification (viz., self-categorization); R for (all) Roles and ideologies associated with gender (viz., gender roles); D for (all) Displays associated with gender (e.g., mannerism, clothing and attire presentation); and S for (all) Sentiments as in intra- and interpersonal attitudes or evaluations about one's own and other gender groups (e.g., self-rated gender typicality, sexism/gender bias). Thus, we treat all the historical and current referents of "gender" as their own analytic objects to be studied from any scholarly standpoint--and quantitatively by us. The latest description of the BIRDS approach can be found here (and the original without the acronym can be found here). We use a parallel nomonet for our understanding and measurement of sexuality. (The contents of this nomonet will be listed here when we publish our first paper on this new nomonet.)
In any case, the majority of our lab's empirical publications are developing quantitative assessments of the facets of gender and, separately, sexuality. The eventual goal is to integrate the two nomonets into a large "nomological web" of connections and divergences between gender and sexuality.
A tertiary line of research in our lab is in prejudice and discrimination regarding U.S. racial/ethnic categories. The "tertiary line" is purely descriptive; obviously, the topic is important, but our lab does not spend the same amount of research time on this topic as the others.
Inclusive Approach from the Outset
It is also worth noting that a key feature of our lab’s approach to psychological science is to be as inclusive in our thinking and data collection as possible from the outset. Consequently, we approach all of our quantitative work on gender and sexuality from the most inclusive perspective possible before designing measures, using existing measures, or collecting data. Our lab believes that starting from an inclusive place of theory and research is a hallmark of any useful scientific investigation. Unfortunately, the history of the life sciences is rife with examples of non-inclusive approaches to social phenomena, which tend to lead to under-developed understandings and roadblocks to scientific progress.
Our best current example of this inclusive approach is being the first research lab to introduce and evaluate the inclusive two-step method for gender demographic questions (original paper here), which involves asking participants about gender identity (first) and birth assigned category (second) in any questionnaire to track cisgender and all transgender (including nonbinary) statuses of respondents. We take a similar approach to understanding sexuality (including to make sure to represent asexuality and aromanticism in all the questions we construct). Consequently, our lab is focused on improving research methods (e.g., the two-step method) as well as the statistical evaluation of responses.
The Importance of Philosophy of Science and Behavioral Measurement
Dr. Charlotte Tate’s supporting area of doctoral training at the University of Oregon was in philosophy of science. Dr. Tate is therefore interested in making the philosophical assumptions supporting the conduct of psychological science plain and clear in her investigations. Accordingly, in addition to publications that concern empirical evaluations of predictions and theories using collected data and statistics, our lab also publishes what the field refers to as “review papers” that seek to further articulate the assumptions and biases that importantly, but often tacitly, underpin approaches to gender and sexuality in psychological science. We often seek to publish these review papers ahead of doing empirical research in order to make clear the arc of our own research programs and allow others to participate in these approaches as well. These review papers additionally serve to strengthen the connection between qualitative and quantitative approaches by showing that the breadth of the former must be reflected in the latter.
In terms of empirical research, our lab takes the abductive reasoning approach to conducting scientific inquiry, which was first articulated by philosopher-scientist Charles Sanders Peirce. Abductive reasoning can be contrasted with the popular hypothetico-deductive reasoning model in psychological science. The hypothetico-deductive model assumes that predictions are deduced from a relatively complete theoretical model of that phenomenon, while abductive logic requires scientists to reason to the best conclusions given the field’s current understanding (deductions) and the data at hand (inductions) (cf. Peirce, 1992). Concretely, researchers are able to sensibly predict some aspects of the phenomenon under empirical investigation but not others ahead of (or a priori to) conducting the study. The aspects that cannot be predicted or deduced are, instead, evaluated as relationships of interest in the results (see, e.g., Tate, 2011, p. 647, for a more detailed description). These empirically derived patterns can then form candidate replications and be used to create research theories that will eventually provide some deductive expectations about data patterns. The iterative interplay of induction and deduction is a cornerstone of the abductive approach.
Stemming from her interest in philosophy of science, Dr. Tate endeavors to create the most precise measurement tools for collected data in psychological science given the field's current capabilities. As a result, much of the lab’s current focus is on developing more precise tools for the measurement of all the facets of gender and sexuality. These tools take the forms of demographic measures, attitudes scales, and reports of behavioral tendencies. To this end, Dr. Tate also emphasizes the importance of the connection between statistical inference and data structures for her own and other's work in various publications, including revising existing statistical techniques in addition to developing new ones.
Finally, underscoring the quantitative connection and cooperation with qualitative perspectives, the general approach of the QuantSAGE lab is completely consistent with the social construction approach of sociologist Dr. Peter L. Berger (1963), in which social information is represented at the individual level, and this individual-level representation allows for variability across social perceivers, even while broad sociological patterns can emerge and be true in the aggregate.
References:
Berger, P. L. (1963). Invitation to sociology: A humanistic perspective. New York: Doubleday.
Peirce, C. S. (1992). Reasoning and the logic of things. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.