“Everyone Has a Right to, Like, Check Their Box:” Findings on a Measure of Gender Identity from a Cognitive Testing Study with Adolescents

Abstract

Efforts to monitor the health of transgender youth, a small but high-risk population, are hindered by a lack of knowledge about how to accurately measure gender identity. Adolescents (n = 30) participated in semistructured qualitative interviews after completing a close-ended transgender-inclusive measure of gender. Interviews explored item comprehension and respondent burden. Participants, who were diverse in age (range = 15-21), gender identity, sexual orientation, and race-ethnicity, were accurately classified as male, female, or transgender. All youth understood transgender as a difference between the physical body and a person's internal sense of self. Nontransgender youth frequently used an example (a woman in a man's body) in their explanations and were largely supportive of the transgender options. Most transgender youth found a response option that they felt was appropriate. Transgender response options were added to a gender measure without impacting the accuracy of nontransgender responses or burdening the nontransgender adolescents in our sample. A modified measure (Gender: male; female; transgender, male-to-female; transgender, female-to-male; transgender, do not identify as exclusively male or female) is recommended for testing in samples that vary by age, race-ethnicity, socioeconomic status, language, and geography. Additional suggestions for research in this area are provided.

Non-binary youth: Access to gender-affirming primary health care

“…Additionally, existing gender identity measures were not inclusive of non-binary genders. Five separate questions were included on the survey in order to elicit youth feedback on how to measure gender; these questions were drawn from existing surveys of adults, clinical measures, and oneoff studies of youth that had limited psychometric testing of measures (e.g., Conron, Scout, & Austin, 2008;Smith, Stewart, Poon, Peled, Saewyc, & McCreary Centre Society, 2014).…”

Monitoring the health of transgender and other gender minority populations: Validity of natal sex and gender identity survey items in a U.S. national cohort of young adults

“…(check one)” with response options “Female” and “Male”. Second, a gender identity measure added to the 2010 GUTS1 questionnaire [ 21 ]: “How do you describe yourself?” with response options “Female”, “Male”, “Transgender”, and “Do not identify as female, male, or transgender”.…”

“…We utilized a retrospective talk-aloud method [ 30 ], which has been used widely in survey item validation [ 21 , 27 , 31 , 32 ]. Participants completed a brief self-report questionnaire including survey items on natal sex and gender identity.…”

Kako pristupiti mjerenju seksualne orijentacije, spolnog i rodnog identiteta? Preporuke za istraživanja o temama koje se odnose na LGBTIQ osobe

“…No, važno je da se pokazalo, na uzorku adolescenata/ica, kako uvođenje opcije odgovora kojom se prepoznaju transrodne osobe za sudionike/ice nije bilo zbunjujuće. Točno su razlikovani transrodni od cisrodnih adolescenata/ica te uvođenje tih opcija nije utjecalo na odgovore cisrodnih osoba (Conron, Scout i Austin, 2008).…”