Should "gender" be required, or is there a better way to collect this information?

Question

I believe in keeping a registration form as simple as possible so that we "grease the skids" toward conversion. Every field on our signup form is required, or else we wouldn't ask it. Here's what we have now:

• First Name (to personalize correspondence)
• Last Name (to verify identity in person with an ID for in-person offers)
• Email Address (to communicate, and to serve as user ID)
• Gender (demographic info)
• Birthdate (to verify age for COPPA compliance, and demographic info)
• Password (to authenticate)

I am concerned that by requiring gender, we create friction (a UX concern). I am also concerned that by making gender optional we lose some important data that Sales needs to do their job (a "business" concern), as well as lose credibility among clients and partners who might not understand the UX justification.

We considered a number of options, each with its own foible or two:

1. Require, but include third option ("decline to state," "other," or something similar): because we send out retail information, we fear people will choose the third option more often to avoid receiving "gendered" content (which would not be the case).
2. Leave optional, but do not list it as such: without marking fields as required or optional, we simply wouldn't give an error if they left this one unselected, but this seems less than transparent, almost a "dark pattern."
3. List as optional: how much data will we lose? And will our clients and partners question our intelligence for not making an "obvious" requirement? Fear, uncertainty, and doubt factor largely here.
4. Move it off registration and collect as a survey question: this guarantees we'll collect much, much less data, but gain a 12.5% simpler form.

So, what to do? Require gender? Make it optional? Something we haven't thought of?

[By the way, the gender field is currently a drop-down defaulted to "select a gender." And we understand there's a difference between sex and gender; we're more interested in how the user identifies than biological stat, hence "gender."]

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UPDATE

We decided to include the question on the form, and follow @Morawski's advice and simply use binary radio buttons side-by-side (without a title). We have yet to decide if it will in fact be required in the back end (thereby returning an error if it's blank), but we will not annotate it either way.

Answer 1

Instead of a dropdown, use three radio buttons. Allow the user to select a third radio button for "Decline to state/Other". Have the last radio button selected by default, and the user can change it. You do not need to mark the field as optional, since there will always be selection.

To diminish your user's potential concerns that this information will be used improperly, you could state at the end of the form (before they submit) that information will not be used for marketing purposes or sent to a third-party.

Answer 2

Don't require gender, don't even ask for gender. Ask for title instead.

Eg:

You can do the work yourselves in translating title into something useful for your demographics and you may actually get more from it than simply asking for gender:

• The ratio between determinate male and female titles will give your male/female split demographic to a pretty good approximation across the field.

• You'll find a percentage of each of Mr, Mrs, Ms, Miss, Dr, Herr, Frau etc etc - and the percentage of users who prefer to go unspecified (due to being optional).

• You'll discover terms you hadn't even thought of catering for.

• You'll find out what people do like to be called for use in future implementations, and you'll see how many people decline to state a title which you can also use to base future decisions on.

• You're also giving the user a simple optional field that gives them a chance to say what they want, rather than pigeon holing every user into this either/or box.

• And since this is not rocket science, you can always change this at a later date and A/B test different options anyway.

Since this is about a business goal - doesn't this give you the most information for demographic analysis purposes? OK, so you have to do a little more work at the back end to make sure that all such manual entries can be analysed, but that's not the issue - it's the user experience.

-- edit --

Considering the question of whether an open ended field requires more thought and might provide more friction than a radio group or drop down box.

It's debatable - there are multiple decision factors interplaying here:

• The negatives of seeming forced to provide information vs the positives of an optional item
• The negatives of a narrow set of choices vs the positives of entering what you like
• The negatives of wondering what to put in an open ended item when trying to cater for all, or the negatives of a minority of people that do not see a radio/dropdown item that suits them.

This is what A/B testing is all about.

I don't see this field as such a showstopper though. It's optional, it's small, does not present an annoyance and I'd be surprised if many users were 'thrown' by entering a title. I'd suggest an adult has pretty much given all the prior consideration as to what they like to be addressed as:

• Those that have no special title will have little difficulty, and for those that do, well - it's optional!
• Those that prefer titles such as Ms will be pleased to be able to use that option as they have specific reasons for doing so.
• Those that have earned a title such as Dr. are always delighted to be given the opportunity to use it, even if they don't always actually use it (depending on the context).
• Those that have a title that you would not otherwise cater for, will thank you for the freedom to use it.
• Some might have a sense of humour and enter Lord or King or something equally hilarious. So let them. If it means they are more likely to complete the form, then everyone's a winner.

Answer 3

Personally I'd make gender completely optional and remove it completely from the sign up process. There's no reason why it matters what gender your users are. Asking for this information creates friction in the sign up process - even if it's clearly marked as "for demographic purposes only". People are suspicious of requests for this type of information.

If your marketing department really needs the demographic information have a specific opt in page where your users can fill in this (and any other information marketing might need).

The quality of information you get will be much higher as people who fill it in have less reason to give you fictional data just to get through the sign up process.

Answer 4

I liked Bagcheck's approach...ask for a possessive pronoun to make it clear why you're asking:

Answer 5

I agree that asking for the user's gender or sex does create some friction. For some reason it feels strange and only appropriate when filling in a medical application form for enlisting in the army or something.

How about circumventing the problem by using something a little more subtle and friendly but that does allow you to derive the same information?

How would you like to be addressed by us:

Answer 6

If you are thinking about making this optional, do you really need this information? Furthermore, if optional, can you extrapolate from the users that entered this information to get to a reasonable statement for your entire user base?

Crazy idea: If the answer is that you are fine with slightly inaccurate data, then you could

• remove the gender question entirely
• require users enter their first name (potential problem with abbreviations here)
• detect the gender automatically by analyzing the first names, store it with the user data and have Sales run queries against the DB if they like

Answer 7

Just add it as a Radio button options. You can even select female by default.

It takes very little cognitive overhead and time for everyone to select the correct value!

Keep selecting the correct gender only one click away.

If you're afraid that there would be some serious exceptions in you're target demographic or a lot of people that don't want to add the information you can add a third option unspecified and set that as the default value.

Asking for a Title adds a big overhead to the one selecting the correct value.

I would also add what the information is actually used for. (or what its not used for eg. no gender targeted advertisment)

You can also add other ways to detect gender. Adding it as a survey question or simply letting sales representatives update the information after phone calls should fill out the blanks pretty fast.