# it is not appropriate to exclude women from research especially on the basis of convenience > **It is not appropriate to exclude women from sport and exercise science research for any reason, especially on the basis of convenience**, i.e. excluding women as participants due to the potential confounding effect of female hormone fluctuations, or cost, i.e., excluding women as par- ticipants because they can be more expensive than men to study due to the extra time (e.g., repeated measures across a menstrual cycle) and resources (e.g., blood samples for the determination of ovarian steroid levels) needed to produce high-quality data.[[(Elliott-Sale et al., 2021)#^spzcj]]