Project Grant Competition
Part 5: Sex and Gender-Based Analysis
Title
Welcome to this learning module in the Project Grant competition series: Part 5: Sex and Gender-Based Analysis. In this module, reviewers will learn about sex and gender-based analysis to ensure they feel prepared to effectively participate in the peer review process.
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Definitions of Sex and Gender
Gender is a social determinant of health. The term gender refers to the socially-constructed roles, behaviours, expressions and identities of girls, women, boys, men and gender-diverse people.
Sex is a biological variable. The term sex refers to the biological attributes of humans and animals, including physical features, chromosomes, gene expression, hormones and anatomy.
Integrating Sex and Gender into Health
Integrating sex and gender into health research requires an approach that systematically examines sex-based (biological) and gender-based (socio-cultural) differences between men, women, boys, girls, and gender-diverse people.
Accounting for sex and gender has the potential to make health research more rigorous, more reproducible and more applicable to everyone. As such, CIHR expects that all research applicants will integrate gender and sex into their research designs, methods, analysis, and/or dissemination of findings when appropriate.
What makes integration of sex a strength, weakness or not applicable?
In this section, you will learn about the key considerations that apply for reviewers to rate the quality of integration of sex as a biological variable in the proposal.
Integration of sex a strength
The integration of sex as a biological variable is a strength in research that has:
- Inclusion or recruitment of male and female cells, tissues, animals or humans.
- Documentation and analysis of the sex of cells, tissues, animals or humans used in the protocol.
- A commitment to disaggregate results by sex.
Integration of sex a weakness
The integration of sex as a biological variable is a weakness in research that:
- Does not provide a scientifically sound justification for a single-sex study.
- Does not report the sex of the biological material used.
- Does not disaggregate the data by sex.
- Conflates and/or confuses the terms sex and gender.
Integration of sex not applicable
There are a few situations where integration of sex may not be applicable:
- Pathogens are grown in vitro in an acellular environment.
- The design and application of some biomedical technologies.
A reasonable explanation should inform the decision why it is not possible or relevant to account for sex as a biological variable.
What makes integration of gender a strength, weakness or not applicable?
In this section, you will learn about the key considerations that apply for rating the quality of integration of gender as a sociocultural determinant of health in the proposal.
Integration of gender a strength
The integration of gender as a sociocultural determinant of health is a strength in research that:
- Describes how gender will be measured in the population under study.
- The recruitment process addresses and mitigates bias.
- Addresses how gendered sub-groups will be compared and that findings will be reported separately in the results section.
Integration of gender a weakness
The integration of gender as a sociocultural determinant of health is a weakness in research that:
- Reports that gender is irrelevant without adequate justification.
- Fails to measure or disaggregate the results by gender when possible and relevant to do so.
- Conflates and/or confuses the terms sex and gender.
Integration of gender not applicable
There are a few situations where integration of gender may not be applicable:
- Biomedical research studies that exclusively use cells, tissues and animals.
- Certain single-sex studies using existing datasets.
- Secondary data analyses when it is impossible to create a new gender variable.
A reasonable explanation should inform the decision why it is not possible or relevant to report on gender as a social determinant of health.
Project Grant Peer Review and Sex and Gender
The expectation that all research applicants will integrate sex and gender into their research designs, methods, analysis and/or dissemination of findings when appropriate is not new for the Project Grant Program. If applicable, applicants are to include relevant details about the integration of sex and gender in their study as part of their proposal. Project Grant peer reviewers will be prompted to assess the integration of sex and/or gender in the application (in particular in their research proposal), and justify their assessment by providing recommendations to the applicants on how they might improve the integration of sex and/or gender.
Sex and Gender in ResearchNet
In the Conduct Reviews task in ResearchNet, please use the checkboxes to indicate your appraisal of the integration of sex as a biological variable as a strength, weakness, or not applicable to the proposal.
There is a second set of checkboxes to indicate your appraisal of the integration of gender as a socio- cultural determinant of health as a strength, weakness, or not applicable to the proposal.
Sex and Gender in ResearchNet 2
The Sex and/or Gender Considerations text box should be used to justify your assessment on whether the integration of sex and/or gender is a strength, a weakness or not applicable to the proposal and to provide recommendations to applicants on how they might improve the strength of their applications with respect to the integration of sex and/or gender.
The goal of this exercise is to provide guidance to applicants and promote scientific excellence through the integration of sex and gender.
Sex and Gender Resources
Not sure where to start? CIHR has curated a collection of training materials and resources to help researchers across all pillars.
Resources to assist reviewers in their assessment of the integration of sex and gender in the research design, methods, analysis and/or dissemination of findings are available on the Sex, Gender and Health section of CIHR’s website.
Additional Resources
The resources listed on screen will provide you with additional details to prepare you for reviewing applications in the Project Grant competition. Before concluding this module, please complete the survey to assist CIHR in tracking the uptake and improving the quality of the learning.
This concludes the Project Grant competition series. You can now exit the module and explore other elearning modules about the peer review process.
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