Ooh. That is a very old topic indeed. The “official” answer is:
<channelling @Christian_Reich >
Does it matter? Would any analysis of the data be impacted in anyway if you could distinguish “unknown” from “did not specify?” (or “refused to disclose” or a number of other such concepts).
If the answer is ‘no’ then you can safely put a 0 in place of gender.
If the answer is ‘yes’ (maybe you are studying how people disclose information about their gender) then the place to put a more accurate description is in the observation table. It is an unwritten rule that you can be more lenient in that table as it’s the catch-all.
</ channelling @Christian_Reich >
I assume that since most of the time this doesn’t matter, and since there is no well-accepted standard vocabulary for all the different gender possibilities, nor a clear differentiation between biological sex. sex at birth and gender, this problem hasn’t yet been solved.
You can see in this thread that you are not the first, nor going to be the last and that it is probably the intention of the community to address this but so far, no better solution was accepted.
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