Accessibility and Equity in the Research Process: Gender Bias in Elite Interview Recruitment

2025/06/26 by Margaret A. T. Kenney, John Salchak

paper · doi:10.1017/pan.2025.10004

Abstract

Abstract Researchers’ racial and gender identities influence their outcomes in academia and the field of political science. This letter interrogates how researcher identity affects the research process: specifically elite interview recruitment. Within an ongoing research project we embed a pre-registered audit experiment randomizing the gender of the researcher conducting outreach to estimate whether there are differences in interviews scheduled holding all other confounders constant. We find that when outreach is conducted by a woman, elites are more likely to schedule an interview. This letter contributes to our understanding of bias and inequality during the research process. In addition, our study offers a new approach to audit experiments that limits deception and wasted time for elites.

Citations

• Gendered Citation Patterns across Political Science and Social Science Methodology Fields

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