How?

Even though equal opportunities in science (meaning gender equality and diversity within the research team) isn‘t the same as sex, gender and diversity in research, both topics are interconnected.
Diversity in your research team might give you a broader variety of perspectives on a research topic. A heterogenic team can help to prevent biases and ‚blind spots‘ and to deliver different perspectives through different backgrounds and experiences.

Furthermore, a reflection of the diversity of the participating researchers might be necessary to incorporate effects on the research.
An obvious example for this are ethnographic studies or qualitative research, in which a reflection of the researcher conducting interviews, observations or group discussions is often a standard.
In other cases an effect might be more unexpected, for example when laboratory animals react differently, depending on who is handeling them.

A very important step of every research project should be the reflection if sex, gender and/or diversity are relevant to the research question. This relevance can take on a variety of different forms.
For example: In urban research gender can offer a valuable perspective for research on cities and communties or in biomedical research an analysis of sex/gender might be vital to ensure the results apply not only to certain groups. This can also include a reflection on which topics are researched and what might be overseen.

The reflection of the research question itself can also mean to include different people, countries and/or societies into the research subject to prevent ‚blind spots‘, e.g. through an eurocentric approach. Or it can mean to specify and explicate a focus on a certain group of people in your research.
Used literature and studies on which a research project might be based on to form the study design should be take into account as well.

The results of these reflections must then be transferred into the study design, e.g. in the process of data collection or in the analysis of your findings.

If your research involves humans or animals as research subjects or uses human or animal samples and/or cells, a reflection is essential and should be incorporated into the study design. To ensure the reflection has a valuable outcome on the research, it is crucial to include this not only in the data collection but also into the analysis.
In this context it is important to highlight and publish not only findings on differences but also findings on similiarities and to be careful with the risk of mis- or overinterpretation.

When studying humans, sex, gender and diversity should be taken into account, e.g. by including a divers group of people into your study design and collecting information on this group that can be taken into account in the analysis.
In research with humans, the entaglement of sex and gender have to be considered as well as the intersection of different dimensions of diversity.
For example: The likelihood of diseases may be influenced by biological aspects of sex such as differences in the immune system, as well as social factors of gender such as different prevention mechanisms that might overlap with other diversity dimensions like different living conditions.

In animal experiments different sexes of lab animals should be included in almost any case. In some study designs even today, only male animals are used in animal experiments without considering the corresponding implications and consequences.
Single-sex experiments should only be used if one sex is understudied, the studied phenomenon is sex-specific or it is well documented that sex does not have an incuence.

When using cells and samples, an important first step is reporting, meaning to specify and document the sex of samples. This is also important if you do not collect samples yourself.

Even if the research itself might not be connected to sex, gender and/or diversity, those dimension canstill be relevant to your research projects findings.
Especially since outreach and transfer are important aspects in a lot of funding programs, possible results and the application of findings should be considered as well.