Models of Gender-Affirming Care in Asia
- The study — what it maps, where it stands, and how the method guards against its author’s position
- Call for language extractors and verifiers — paid, part-time roles for seven languages (you are here)
CALL FOR EXTRACTORS AND VERIFIERS · OPEN
We are recruiting paid, part-time, remote language researchers for a study, registered on the Open Science Framework, of what seven Asian health systems formally require and provide for gender-affirming care. For each language there are two roles: an extractor, who reads the sources in the original and records what they say, and a verifier, who independently checks that work. The Korean roles start first, for the pilot; the others follow it.
Why native-language readers
The study turns on fine distinctions in legal, regulatory and clinical-policy language. A machine translation read first, and then corrected, still shapes how a passage is understood. So every non-English source is read and recorded by a native-language researcher, and checked by a second, independent one. The author extracts English-language sources and makes sure the codebook means the same thing in all seven systems, but cannot change what a source is recorded as saying except by pointing to the source and the codebook, and only with the extractor’s agreement.
The extractor
- Calibration. Code a common set of English-language sources, as every extractor and verifier does, so that all seven systems start from the same reading of the codebook.
- Search. Run the registered searches in your language on your jurisdiction’s official sites and databases, and propose any search terms that are missing. Terms can be added, never removed.
- Extraction. For each source, record the exact passage, where it is, and your English rendering of it, and propose how it should be coded: what is required, who requires it, for whom, and how well it is documented.
- Pathway. Set out, step by step, the documented route to a first hormone prescription and to each surgical procedure.
- Plain-language summary. Translate a one-page summary of your jurisdiction’s pathway into the local language.
The verifier
- Calibration. The same common set as the extractors.
- Blind extraction. For a random 20% of fields, read the sources and record your own answer before you see the extractor’s.
- Full check. Check every key-field data point and every pathway step against its original-language source, and a random sample of the rest. If that sample shows too many changes, you check everything.
- Pathway reconstruction. Independently map one complete care pathway from the sources before seeing the extractor’s version.
- Search check. Search for sources that may have been missed, for a sample of fields, before seeing the search log.
- Optional, ongoing. Check reported changes to laws or rules within 30 days, between annual updates.
Where anyone disagrees, the source decides. Every disagreement, and every change made while harmonising, is logged and published.
Roles open
| Language | Covers | Specific requirements | Timing |
|---|---|---|---|
| Korean | South Korea | Legal and administrative Korean: statutes, HIRA and NHIS rules. Reading older statutes with Hanja is useful. | First (pilot) |
| Japanese | Japan | Legal and administrative Japanese; family-court and MHLW materials | After registration |
| Chinese | Taiwan; Hong Kong; Chinese-language sources for Singapore and Malaysia | Traditional and Simplified characters; written Cantonese in Hong Kong legislative records | After registration |
| Thai | Thailand | Legal Thai (Royal Gazette, Krisdika) and NHSO benefit rules | After registration |
| Malay | Malaysia | Legal Malay, and Jawi script for state Syariah enactments and fatwa records | After registration |
| English (legal) | English-language sources for Hong Kong, Singapore and Malaysia | Verifier only: common-law legal reading, checking the author’s extraction in full | After registration |
| Tamil (on call) | Occasional Tamil-language sources, mainly Singapore | Extraction or checking per source; expected volume is small | As needed |
Each language except English and Tamil has one extractor and one verifier. You can apply for either role or both, but one person holds only one role per language.
Who we are looking for
Essential
- Native or near-native reading of the language, including legal and administrative writing
- Strong written English
- Working knowledge of the jurisdiction’s legal and health systems, and of where its official documents are published
- Careful, consistent work to a written codebook
Useful
- Training or work in law, health policy, public health, medicine, or legal and medical translation (graduate students welcome)
- Experience with systematic reviews, legal research databases or structured data extraction
- Familiarity with gender-affirming care or transgender health policy
We welcome applications from trans and gender-diverse people.
Time, pay and terms
| Korean pilot | Extractor about 30–40 hours; verifier about 15–25 hours; over 3–4 weeks (estimates) |
| Full study, per jurisdiction | Extractor about 100–200 hours; verifier about 50–80 hours; spread over several months (estimates; they depend on how many sources there are) |
| Calibration | About 4–6 hours, paid, before starting |
| Tamil (on call) | Per task, usually under 2 hours each |
| Pay | US$30 per hour, the same for every language and both roles, paid monthly on logged hours. The one-hour test task is paid at the same rate. |
| Arrangement | Remote, independent contractor; flexible hours within agreed milestones |
| Credit | Named acknowledgement in the dataset and paper, with your consent: extractors under the contributor roles “investigation” and “data curation”, verifiers under “validation”. Authorship is offered wherever the ICMJE criteria are met. |
| Confidentiality | Draft data stay confidential until each jurisdiction’s public release |
Independence and conflicts of interest
Extractors and verifiers record their own judgements. The author cannot overrule either except by pointing to the source. The extractor and the verifier for a language must be independent of each other: no working, supervisory or family relationship, and not at the same institution where that can be avoided.
The author declares her own interests too, including her position on gender-affirming care. They are listed, with dates, in our register of declared interests, and the ones that bear on this study are set out on the study page.
Please declare, when you apply:
- any employment by, or contract with, a clinic, hospital, insurer or ministry in the jurisdiction you would work on, now or in the past three years
- any role in an advocacy organisation working on gender-affirming care
- any other interest a reader might reasonably see as relevant
A declared interest rarely rules you out. You will not code any data point sourced from an organisation you work or have recently worked for; those go to the other reader and the author. Extractors and verifiers are not invited to the study’s separate pre-publication correction round for their own jurisdiction.
How to apply
Email [email protected] with the subject line “Extractor – [language]”, “Verifier – [language]” or “Extractor or verifier – [language]”, and attach:
- A CV (two pages at most)
- A short statement (up to 300 words) on your reading level in the language, your relevant background and your availability
- Your declaration of interests, or “none”
Applications are reviewed as they arrive. Shortlisted applicants complete a short paid test task, of about one hour, working with five data points from real sources. We then hold a video call to agree terms.
There is no form on this page, and that is deliberate: an email is not stored in this site’s database. Your application is used only for recruitment to this study, and is deleted once recruitment closes unless you ask us to keep it for later roles.
Eden Openly is an independent clinical health-education publication. It receives no funding from, and has no commercial relationship with, any provider of gender-related healthcare or any pharmaceutical company. Extractors and verifiers are paid by the author. Our full position on funding and interests is set out in our statement of independence, and every interest is listed, with its date, in our register of declared interests.