Also, depending on where you are in your process it can be really useful to take a step back and look at the broader purpose of any identity question “standardization”.
Here are a few questions we usually ask ourselves when quantitative data’s innate pressure towards standardization rears its head:
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Why do you want to collect this information?
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Is the demographic/identity data what you want to know or is it a proxy for something else?
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Are you trying to understand a type of person or a type of lived experience?
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Are the benefits of standardizing your system going to be felt equally for people in each of the categories you create?
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Are the downsides to standardizing your categories going to be felt equally across the people in your system?
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Who does standardizing make this process better for: people working the data, consuming the data products, or the people providing the data?
Answers to these can help to provide a more solid foundation to the “why” behind how you ask these questions.