Questions to Identify Gender Diversity
Emilia Lombardi, PhD; Swagata Banik, PhD; Jesper Zuber; and Katherine Mitchell
Baldwin Wallace University, Berea, Ohio
The study was supported with a grant by the Williams Institute, UCLA School of Law as part of the Gender Identity in U.S. Surveillance (GenIUSS) Project
Background
Transgender has been defined generally as not conforming to societal norms of gender, or specifically to having a gender identity and/or expression that is contrary to one’s assigned sex at birth. The term is used to refer to a broad range of identities and expressions within the United States and other English speaking countries. There are efforts to identify study measures that are able to identify transgender populations, but little is known about how cisgender men and women will respond to those questions
Methods
The study interviewed 25 cisgender and transgender men and women to cognitively test how individuals respond to questions about transition status, gender nonconformity, and birth-sex assignment (the two-step and gender nonconformity measures). The results will help assess the utility and understanding of quantitative measures designed to people’s transition status and gender nonconformity.
Results
Factors discussed include the understandability of the questions and participants ability to accurately identify people’s transition status and gender nonconformity in a manner that has high reliability and validity within quantitative analysis. Generally, participants were able to easily answer questions relating to transition status but had more difficulty regarding gender expression
Discussion/Conclusion
Results will show that measures to identify transgender populations can be effectively used on cisgender populations, while still being able to identify transgender populations.