Tag Archive for: neurodiversity

Gender Self-Report seeks to capture the gender spectrum for broad research applications

form with check boxes for genderA new validated self-report tool called the Gender Self-Report provides researchers a way to characterize the gender of research participants beyond their binary designated sex at birth.

The multi-dimensional Gender Self-Report, developed using a community-driven approach and then scientifically validated, is outlined in a peer-reviewed article in the American Psychologist, a journal of the American Psychological Association.

The big picture

“This is the first broadly validated tool that allows us to measure inner gender experience across a large group of people in a rigorous way that doesn’t require a person to understand specialized gender-related terms,” says John Strang, Psy.D., who directs the Gender and Autism Program at Children’s National Hospital. He co-authored the journal article about the measure and co-led the initiative to develop it. “Typical gender assessments are fixed check boxes, which is problematic for capturing gender in people who are not familiar with many of the self-descriptors, which vary in their use and meaning.”

Strang notes that even open-field gender assessments can be problematic for people who experience gender diversity but are not aware of nuanced gender-related language.

Why it matters

This new gender characterization and inclusion method will allow researchers from a broad array of fields (e.g., social sciences, medicine, education) to model their participants’ inner gender experience more equitably in research. The resulting studies will be able to provide deeper understanding of how a person’s gender can play a role in study outcomes.

Senior author and statistical lead for the project, Ji Seung Yang, Ph.D., from University of Maryland Department of Human Development and Quantitative Methodology, foresees this tool as an important addition to the research toolkit for people studying neuroimaging, genetics and any other research that requires a more accurate and detailed picture of an individual’s gender experience.

What’s unique

The Gender Self-Report tool is the first of its kind to be developed and validated by researchers together with the gender diverse and neurodiverse communities directly. These efforts align with work in many fields of clinical research to ensure that study findings reflect the insights and experiences of the people who are being studied, rather than simply capturing the researcher’s external perspective of those participants.

The tool is appropriate for use by youth (as young as 10 years of age) and adults, gender diverse and cisgender individuals, and non-autistic and autistic people. The focus on inclusivity for autistic people is in keeping with the common intersection of autism and gender diversity (i.e., 11% of gender-diverse people are estimated to be autistic).

Gregory Wallace, Ph.D., co-author of the measure and associate professor in the Department of Speech, Language & Hearing Sciences at The George Washington University, calls the tool a “game changer for any research that needs to understand specifics about how gender experience can impact health-related or developmental differences.”

The Gender Self-Report: A Multidimensional Gender Characterization Tool for Gender-Diverse and Cisgender Youth and Adults, appears in the American Psychologist.

John Strang

Neuro- and gender-diverse teens find their voices

John Strang

“These autistic young people spoke a lot about their gender and gender needs and their descriptions of gender dysphoria were deeply emotional. One of the common characteristics of autism is reduced communication of feelings, yet many of these young people were very clear about the anguish that gender dysphoria caused for them and also their need for gender-related interventions,” says John Strang, Psy.D., director of the Gender and Autism Program at Children’s National Health System and study lead.

“They Thought It Was An Obsession” is the title of a qualitative study from the Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders, that provides an unprecedented glimpse into the development, thoughts, perceptions, feelings and needs of this poorly understood but significant subgroup of transgender and gender minority teens.

The title is an accurate reflection of the study’s analysis, which finds that the accounts of gender dysphoria in autistic transgender youth parallel those of transgender young people without autism. These findings stand in contrast to previous studies asserting the idea that gender dysphoria in autistic youth is driven primarily by superficial autism-related interests.

“These autistic young people spoke a lot about their gender and gender needs and their descriptions of gender dysphoria were deeply emotional. One of the common characteristics of autism is reduced communication of feelings, yet many of these young people were very clear about the anguish that gender dysphoria caused for them and also their need for gender-related interventions,” says John Strang, Psy.D., director of the Gender and Autism Program at Children’s National Health System and study lead.

Additionally, the autistic characteristics of these young people – which may reduce their concern for social conventions – often lead them to express their gender in individual and sometimes surprising ways.

“A transgender autistic young woman may wear a full beard and understand her gender identity as something completely separate from her appearance,” says Dr. Strang. “The cooccurrence of gender identity-diversity and autism may reveal something of the deeper nature of gender when the overlay of social gender expectations is reduced.”

The study followed 22 autistic transgender teens over nearly two years. It is the first study of its kind to track and follow up with this many youth with the cooccurrence over a significant period of time. The authors believe the report can serve as a guide for how clinicians, peers and families can better support and understand teens who are both neurodiverse and gender diverse.

The study’s methodology is also novel, as it features the inclusion of a slate of autistic gender-diverse coanalysts and coauthors who partnered in the interpretation of the youth provided data.

The coauthor group also included a retransitioned (previously transgender) self-advocate coanalyst to help provide context regarding the experiences and trajectories of the few study participants who moved away from transgender identity during the study’s duration.

Reid Caplan of the Autistic Self-Advocacy Network, an autistic transgender self-advocate and one of the study’s coauthors noted, “Too often in medical literature, the overlap between autistic and transgender identities is described in a way that pathologizes both of these communities. As an autistic transgender young adult, I feel privileged to be a coauthor of research that puts the voices of autistic and gender-diverse youth at the forefront. By giving these youth control over their own narratives, this study exemplifies a key value of the self-advocate community: Nothing about us, without us!”