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.

Stephanie Jarvi,Kerith J Conron,Allegra R Gordon,Sari L Reisner,S Bryn Austin,Laura Anatale Tardiff

doi:10.1186/1471-2458-14-1224

Abstract

BackgroundA barrier to monitoring the health of gender minority (transgender) populations is the lack of brief, validated tools with which to identify participants in surveillance systems.MethodsWe used the Growing Up Today Study (GUTS), a prospective cohort study of U.S. young adults (mean age = 20.7 years in 2005), to assess the validity of self-report measures and implement a two-step method to measure gender minority status (step 1: assigned sex at birth, step 2: current gender identity). A mixed-methods study was conducted in 2013. Construct validity was evaluated in secondary data analysis of the 2010 wave (n = 7,831). Cognitive testing interviews of close-ended measures were conducted with a subsample of participants (n = 39).ResultsCompared to cisgender (non-transgender) participants, transgender participants had higher levels of recalled childhood gender nonconformity age < 11 years and current socially assigned gender nonconformity and were more likely to have ever identified as not completely heterosexual (p < 0.001). No problems with item comprehension were found for cisgender or gender minority participants. Assigned sex at birth was interpreted as sex designated on a birth certificate; transgender was understood to be a difference between a person’s natal sex and gender identity. Participants were correctly classified as male, female, or transgender.ConclusionsThe survey items performed well in this sample and are recommended for further evaluation in languages other than English and with diverse samples in terms of age, race/ethnicity, and socioeconomic status.

Highlights

A barrier to monitoring the health of gender minority populations is the lack of brief, validated tools with which to identify participants in surveillance systems
We use the term natal sex/gender status to refer to the biological and social cross-classification of participants based on assigned sex at birth and current gender identity that allows measurement of gender minority and cisgender identities
The goal of this research was to use a unique mixedmethods design to evaluate the validity of self-report natal sex and gender identity survey items using the Growing Up Today Study 1 (GUTS1), a longitudinal cohort study of U.S young adults

Summary

Introduction

A barrier to monitoring the health of gender minority (transgender) populations is the lack of brief, validated tools with which to identify participants in surveillance systems. The term gender minority refers to transgender and gender nonconforming people whose sex assigned at birth is different from their current gender identity or expression. A two-step method for identifying gender minority participants has been proposed [10,11,12,13] This procedure uses natal sex (step 1) and current gender identity (step 2) to cross-tabulate natal sex/gender status. We use the term natal sex/gender status to refer to the biological and social cross-classification of participants based on assigned sex at birth (natal sex) and current gender identity (gender) that allows measurement of gender minority and cisgender identities. A strength of the two-step approach is that it takes into account both natal sex (biological) and gender (social) processes, which are key for epidemiologic studies of health [14,15,16,17,18]

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