Incorporating equity, diversity, inclusion and anti-racism into research

Alignment with Tri-Agency policies and research societies 

Canada has made excellent strides in promoting EDI-R principles in research, including specific policy statements in the Tri-Agency administration of research funds as well as policies from field-specific regulatory bodies.

Equitable recruitment of human research participants

Incorporating sex and gender into research design

According to the Canadian Institutes for Health Research (CIHR), sex and gender can be defined as:

• Sex: Biological attributes of humans and animals, including physical features, chromosomes, gene expression, hormones and anatomy.
• Gender: Socially-contsructed roles, behaviours, expressions and identities of girls, women, boys, men and gender-diverse people.

In health research fields, sex and gender are often considered independent predictors of health and each concept has its own intersection with human behaviour and physiology. When designing research questions, our department researchers consider how both sex and gender can be incoporated into their design. The following are a few of the ways our faculty members target sex and gender in our research:

• Balancing human research design to recruit equal numbers of men and women (gender) or males and females (sex) to improve generalizability of research findings;
• Investigating specific sex-differences in human physiology, with focused research questions on how males and females differ from each other during exercise;
• Exploring women's health or female-specific research questions, acknowleging that a large majority of previous work has focused on men's health or male-specific physiology. For example, a recent report from Queen's University found that females were underrepresented in 63% of cardiovascular physiology publications between 2010-2018 (Wilson et al. 2020 Appl Physiol Nutr Metab 45(8):911-4 https://doi.org/10.1139/apnm-2019-0693)

Accounting for female sex hormones in human research design

A commonly cited barrier to including women in human research design is how to account for rapidly changing female sex hormones (i.e., estrogen and progesterone) during the menstrual cycle. While it is true that sex hormones do impact biology, this is not a valid reason to exlude women from human research questions. Two open-access editorials on the topic can be found here:

Mannon et al. 2020. Does sex matter?: an update on the implementation of sex as a biological variable in research. Am J Physiol Renal Physiol 318(2):F329-F331

Lindsey et al. 2021. Reinforcing rigor and reproducibiltiy expectations for use of sex and gender in cardiovascular research. Am J Physiol Heart Circ Physiol 321(5):H819-H824

Our researchers take many different approaches for considering sex hormones in our research designs:

• Repeat testing of naturally-cycling women in different phases of the menstrual cycle;
• Recruiting women using oral contraceptives to more predictably track periods of high and low concentrations of sex hormones;
• Noting menstrual phase in participant intake to consider when interpreting final results.

Equitable trainee recruitment practices

As a component of Tri-Agency funding applications, all faculty members have considered EDI-R principles in undergraduate and graduate trainee admissions. While individual strategies differ, we encourage our research teams to consider the following suggestions and examples when recruiting and retaining research trainees. 

Research team composition

Diversity in team composition represents many things, including diversity in opinion, lived experiences, and representation, all of which has been suggested to lead to enhanced ingenuity and creativity in small groups. Some research has indicated that shared values can push research teams to stay productive and keep on track to long-term goals, and a positive lab environment can facilitate meaningful day-to-day interactions among peers. Faculty are encouraged to recruit not only from local academic applicant pools, but also from non-profit sectors, community research groups, rural universities and colleges, and from fields outside their area of expertise.  

Defining academic success

While course grades are a convenient benchmark for academic success, it is worth acknowledging the systemic barriers in place that advantage some individuals over others in the university environment. With respect to time, it is prudent to acknowledge that some students may have other responsibilities that do not allow 24/7 study hours; for example, taking care of dependents, working part-time/full-time jobs to support living expenses, as well as illness and access situations beyond their control that would prevent students from engaging in all on-campus and in-person activities. In addition to using academic grades, faculty are encouraged to consider specific courses taken, academic pathways, participation with content outside of formal classroom settings, as well as informal comments on academic success from reference letter requests. 

Considering volunteerism

Similar to academic success, KHS encourages faculty to consider the time barriers for applicants to engage in high-volume volunteerism activities, which may not be feasible for students with personal responsibilities. The act of volunteering itself is not a desirable quality, rather, the skills of independence, leadership, compassion, and work ethic that are traditionally inferred from community-serving activities. Faculty are encouraged to consider leadership qualities and community engagement that can be observed outside the academic CV; for example, hobbies, social interactions, insight from references, and evidence of persistence in the face of adversity. 

Writing reference letters

Academic reference letters are required by most graduate-level programs and can make the difference for both admissions and job application success. However, due to the subjective nature of reference writing, some research points towards issues when both writing and evaluating academic references. For example, studies have shown that gendered (i.e., man/woman) language can have unintended consequences by referring to negative gender stereotypes through unconscious bias. To see this bias in action, we recommend readers explore this Gender Bias Calculator to explore how woman-associated and man-associated descriptors might slip into writing. 

• As a general recommendation, we advise reference writers to avoid using given first names in letters, and editing writing to reduce gender-associated descriptors that reinforce gender stereotypes for reference adjudicators. This mandate has begun to be used in federal grant panels and we encourage faculty to start adopting gender-neutral practices. 

• For Example: “Mary Doe is a charming young woman” vs “Doe is an excellent communicator who is respected by their peers.”