RESUMO
In our article titled, "How WEIRD and androcentric is sex research? Global inequities in study populations," we showed that the published sex research is dominated by male and WEIRD (Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich, and Democratic) samples. The commentary on our article by Sakaluk and Daniel critiqued the dichotomous coding of WEIRD and non-WEIRD contexts. After acknowledging how the androcentric bias finding was disregarded in the whole discussion, we used this critique as an opportunity to expand our argument about the epistemic exclusion and invisibility of researchers and samples from the majority of the world in sex research. We think having this debate between two groups of researchers located at Western universities is at odds with our intention. Thus, we invited researchers from Global South countries to join the debate via a short survey, and expanded our recommendations from the original paper with the help of these voices.
RESUMO
Previous researchers have noted the domination of Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich, and Democratic (WEIRD) samples in fields like psychology. In this study we asked: how WEIRD and androcentric is contemporary sex research? We focused on two historically underrepresented groups in research, namely non-WEIRD and women/gender non-conforming samples. We analyzed 2,223 articles drawn from five leading journals in scientific sexuality research (<i>Archives of Sexual Behavior, Journal of Sex Research, Journal of Sex and Marital Therapy, Journal of Sexual Medicine</i>, and <i>International Journal of Sexual Health</i>). We coded the national context and gender of sampled populations for articles published between 2015 and 2019 in these journals. Results indicated that WEIRD populations dominate the published findings in sex research (ranging from 68% to 88%). Two journals had a higher number of studies that only included men as participants, and one a higher number of samples that consisted of only women, and very few included gender diverse samples (i.e., non-binary, trans*, intersex). Recommendations for improving the current research and publishing practices are discussed.