87% of athletics volunteers who expressed a view said that males who have been through male puberty should not be allowed to compete in the female category.
We have passed on these findings to Jack Buckner CEO of UK Athletics. You can read our letter here.
On 22 January 2022 it was revealed that World Athletics are consulting on a proposal to allow some males, including males who identify as transgender, to compete in women's athletics on condition that they reduce their testosterone levels below 2.5 nanomoles per litre for two years. This was widely reported in the press.
We are a group of runners who believe it is important for UK Athletics and World Athletics to be informed of the views of the UK athletics community on this issue.
We surveyed athletics club volunteers to find their views on this question. We contacted 416 running clubs either by email or using their website contact form and asked whoever responded the following question.
World Athletics are consulting on a proposal to allow males who identify as transgender to compete in women's athletics on condition that they reduce their testosterone levels below 2.5 nanomoles per litre for two years. This has been widely reported in the press.
What is your view on this proposal? Choose the option below which best reflects your personal view.
The names of the clubs were found using an online directory of athletics clubs. We contacted the clubs in a random order. We found the contact details for each club by searching for their name on Google and then visiting their website. Not all clubs still existed and some clubs or did not make their contact details available on their website so could not be contacted. We generated a unique code for each club contacted and only one survey response was allowed for each club. The text of the messages sent to clubs can be found here.
The raw survey results were as follows:
| Option | Number of responses |
|---|---|
| Yes - support World Athletics' proposal | 8 |
| No - oppose World Athletics' proposal | 55 |
| Don't know | 2 |
| Total | 65 |
This means that of 87% of the volunteers who expressed a view opposed World Athletics' preferred option.
To understand whether the sample size is large enough to be sure of the results, we can construct a 95% confidence interval for this estimate. We therefore estimate that between 73.5% and 92.4% of volunteers responding to club correspondence who have a view on the issue oppose World Athletics' policy.
Another way to understand the sample size is to use the method of hypothesis testing. We hypothesised that a majority of respondents who express a view would oppose World Athletics' policy. Suppose on the contrary that 50% of respondents who express a view would oppose World Athletics' policy: the probabiliy of us getting our results would be just 0.00000005%, leading us to reject this contrary view. This means we have evidence in support of our hypothesis at a confidence level of 99.99999995%.
This survey has been designed to be as rigorous as possible given the resources available to us. Nevertheless, any survey has limitations and we list the key limitations of the survey here. We do not believe they will have had a significant material impact upon the result.
The sample size of the survey was not a limitation. Because of the random design of the survey we have been able to compute the statistical significance of our results and confidence intervals around our estimates. We do not think conducting a larger survey would make any material difference to the key finding that the volunteers do not support World Athletics' policy.
Many of these limitations could be addressed by UK Athletics holding its own survey using its database of members.
We would like to thank the volunteers who contacted clubs to invite them to participate in the survey and all the club volunteers we contacted, whether they answered our survey or not, for the work they do fielding correspondence for their athletics club.
John Armstrong is Webmaster of Mornington Chasers Running Club and also is a member of the coaching team. He is a Reader in Financial Mathematics at King's College London.
Alice Sullivan is Chair of Mornington Chasers Running Club. She is a Professor of Sociology at University College London with an expertise in longitudinal data analysis and data collection.
This survey was carried out by a number of volunteers. It was conducted in a personal capacity by the volunteers and was not performed on behalf of Mornington Chasers Running Club or as a university research project.