Research brief: some data concerning the reporting of participants' gender in the mental retardation literature.

The gender of participants in articles published from 1991 through 2000 in eight journals relevant to mental retardation was determined. Overall, participants were used in 65% of the articles; gender was not reported in 26% of them. When gender was reported, 6%, 8%, and 60% of the investigators used females only, males only, and both sexes, respectively. Unless gender is reported, one cannot ascertain to whom results should generalize or whether gender affects the variable under investigation. For these and other reasons, we recommend that researchers routinely specify how many of their participants are males and how many are females. This information requires little space and in most cases is easy to obtain.

Participation of women as authors and editors in journals concerned with mental retardation and related topics.

The present survey determined women's participation in eight journals concerned with mental retardation and related topics. The number of female authors was recorded for all articles published in these journals from 1991 through 2000. The number of women on the editorial board each year, for each journal, also was tabulated. For all years and all journals, women were first authors of 41% of articles published. Women wrote 34% of single-author articles. Overall, 45% of all authors were women. Women constituted 34% of the editorial board members for the eight journals combined. In sum, these data suggest that women's contribution to the mental retardation literature decreases with the prestige of the activity.