The Gender Minority Youth Study: Overview of Methods and Social Media Recruitment of a Nationwide Sample of U.S. Cisgend
- PDF / 628,742 Bytes
- 10 Pages / 595.276 x 790.866 pts Page_size
- 8 Downloads / 220 Views
ORIGINAL PAPER
The Gender Minority Youth Study: Overview of Methods and Social Media Recruitment of a Nationwide Sample of U.S. Cisgender and Transgender Adolescents Rachel H. Salk1 · Brian C. Thoma1 · Sophia Choukas‑Bradley2 Received: 7 May 2019 / Revised: 24 March 2020 / Accepted: 25 March 2020 © Springer Science+Business Media, LLC, part of Springer Nature 2020
Abstract Recent research has documented significant mental health disparities for transgender adolescents. However, the extant literature is hindered by vague operationalizations of gender identity and limited measurement of trans-specific stressors. In this article, we (1) introduce and describe the Gender Minority Youth (GMY) Study, a large-scale study of transgender youth disparities; and (2) provide evidence of the feasibility of using social media to recruit a diverse sample of U.S. transgender and cisgender youth. Facebook and Instagram advertisements targeted 14–18-year-old adolescents to complete an online survey. Participants (N = 3318) self-reported gender assigned at birth and current gender identity, mental health symptoms, and transgender-specific stressors and milestones. Adolescents included 1369 cisgender (n = 982 cisgender female; n = 387 cisgender male), 1938 transgender (n = 986 transgender male; n = 132 transgender female; n = 639 nonbinary assigned female at birth; n = 84 nonbinary assigned male at birth; n = 84 questioning gender identity assigned female at birth; n = 13 questioning gender identity assigned male at birth), and 11 intersex youth. The GMY Study is the first nationwide sample of U.S. adolescents recruited specifically for a study of mental health disparities between transgender and cisgender youth. We demonstrate the feasibility of using social media advertisements and a waiver of parental permission to recruit a large sample of adolescents, including subsamples of gender minority youth. We remedied limitations in the existing literature by including appropriate measures of gender assigned at birth, current gender identity, and detailed questions about transgender-specific stressors and transition milestones. Keywords Adolescent · LGBT · Transgender · Gender identity · Mental health · Minority health
Introduction
All authors have contributed equally to this work and should be considered joint first authors. Electronic supplementary material The online version of this article (https://doi.org/10.1007/s10508-020-01695-x) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users. * Rachel H. Salk [email protected] 1
Department of Psychiatry, University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine, Pittsburgh, PA 15213, USA
Department of Psychology, University of Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh, PA, USA
2
In recent years, public discussions about transgender identities have increased dramatically (Goldberg, 2017), accompanied by debates within research and clinical communities regarding gender minority identities in adolescence (Wadman, 2018). Transgender or gender minority adolescents are those whose gender identi
Data Loading...
