The ECHO questionnaire has been carefully designed by a team of psychologists from the University of Bedfordshire with input from Network for Surviving Stalking. We want to find out about your experience of harassment – via the internet or your mobile phone – We also want you to tell us how this experience has affected your life. We know harassment/stalking can be a distressing experience not often understood by others. There is also very little research available on cyber harassment/stalking. Your responses will contribute to a greater awareness of the problem and ways of improving it.
We hope completing the questionnaire won’t cause you distress but as it relates to incidents you may have found upsetting, you may choose to fill it in at a time where you have a source of support available
Note: Please take the trigger warning very seriously. Taking this survey has been very upsetting to people because of the subject matter.
Also, as with many surveys of this nature, it is gender-binary.
Is the gender question mandatory? I used to contact survey authors about it all the time, but now I only do if the survey won’t let me leave it blank.
The survey is somewhat poorly written; I gave up on it partway through because it was impossible to give an answer of “Not applicable” in some instances where it was appropriate.
It looks to me like the only required question is the consent one, which implies one can skip the gender question, as well as any other questions one cannot answer. I answered them all, so I don’t know for certain.