What Do(n’t) Women Know? Examining Gender Differences in Survey Responses

• In Event: Using Surveys to Measure and Explore Gender

Abstract

It is well established that women are more likely to respond “don’t know” to survey questions than men, particularly for questions of traditional political knowledge (e.g. Mondak and Anderson, 2004; Dolan, 2011). In the UK, it has also been noted that women are more likely to say “don’t know” when polled on their vote intention (Women’s Budget Group, 2023). However, previous research suggests that this gap narrows when women are asked about “gender-relevant” items (Dolan, 2011) or local, rather than national, politics (Shaker, 2012) in the US. A more systematic review of the type of survey question women respond “don’t know” to is therefore overdue, especially given the usual response of researchers is to simply “drop the don’t knows” from their models. Using the British Election Study Online Panel, which has over 100,000 respondents across 25 waves and includes a wide variety of variables covering political interest, knowledge, behaviour, vote intention, demographics, and opinions on a large variety of topics, we systematically evaluate the gender gap in “don’t know” responses across these variables and how it varies by the type of question (e.g. categorical v scale) and topic of question. We show how and when the gender gap in “don’t know” response varies across a much more complete set of topics than prior research and suggest avenues for future research to understand the patterns we uncover.

Authors

• Hannah Bunting, University of Exeter

• Ceri Fowler, University of Oxford

• Lotte Hargrave, UCL

• Anna Sanders

• Jessica Cristina Smith, University of Southampton