[Assessment and operationalization of the characteristic "gender" in representative population-based surveys: challenges and implications with the example of the GeSiD study].

Representative quantitative surveys assess the participants' gender in order to allow for gender specific analyses of the research questions and to draw conclusions about the populations. This is important in order to develop information and interventions tailored to the target groups. However, although gender is no longer considered exclusively as a binary construct, it is still often surveyed through a binary variable with the response options woman/man or female/male.