The Williams Institute at UCLA has announced a couple of new studies it will be initiating lter this year, having received grants for the projects from the NIH.
The Institute received a $3.4 million grant for a five year "Generations" project focusing on lesbian gay and bisexual populations in the US. That grant and an additional $285,000 grant will fund TransPop: US Transgender Population Health Survey.
The yearlong study, which was announced earlier this week, will be the first of its kind to use random sampling methods to obtain data about the transgender community. Researchers expect to find out about the racial distribution of transgender individuals, their socioeconomic backgrounds, their access to health care and their experiences. Ilan Meyer, senior scholar of public policy and researcher at the Williams Institute at the UCLA School of Law, will lead the study.
From about 350,000 individuals in the U.S. who are surveyed by Gallup annually, individuals who identify themselves as transgender will be invited to participate in “TransPop.” About 1,000 transgender individuals are expected to be screened by Gallup for the study, with 300 to 500 of them expected to participate in “TransPop,” Meyer said.
Although we’ve gained a lot of information about transgender individuals from studies over the years, the question we’re trying to answer is if you took a random sample of the U.S. population, how many of them would identify as transgender?
It’s going to be a huge contribution to the field because we can now put into perspective where a particular study sample belongs in terms of the entire transgender population as a whole.
--Meyer
The US Census does not ask questions about either sexual orientation or gender identity.
Determining the size of the transgender population accurately has always been difficult, said Tristin Rose, a chemistry graduate student and transgender rights advocate.
A question that frequently comes up when trying to figure out how to better serve the transgender population is ‘How many transgender people are there?" And the answer is that we don’t know.
--Rose
Not even UCLA collects gender identity information from its students, faculty, or staff.
What does it mean to be transgender? It is such a large umbrella term. How do you quantify? We’re not going to get a perfect number.
--Raja Battar, director, UCLA LGBT Campus Resource Center
Discrimination may also discourage people from identifying as transgender even when asked.
It’s almost certain that many transgender individuals won’t check the box. Even if they might like to, the potential ramifications to their safety may not be worth the risk.
--Rose
This is really kind of a beginning. Our survey with Gallup will also help others who want to include questions about gender identity in their surveys to look at how well our methods worked or not.
--Meyer
The study, done in collaboration with faculty from Columbia University and the Fenway Institute at Fenway Health, is slated to begin in July and is currently planned as a one-time survey.
In researching this diary, I also discovered that the Williams Institute is participating in the GenIUSS Group: Gender Identity in US Surveillance, which is a collaboration which is
trying to locate the best methods to determine transgender status and gender expression.
As this brief outlines, there are several existing examples of gender-related measures in population surveys and other data collection instruments. Aspects of gender measured in the above questions include a two-step measure of current gender identity and sex assigned at birth, two-item measure of socially assigned gender expression, and two single-item measures of transgender status. Importantly, none of the questions presented here should be taken as ideal models or approached from the perspective of “one size fits all.” Survey administrators, researchers, and policymakers should consult with transgender scientists and community members to determine which gender-related measures are most relevant to the circumstances in which data are needed, and thus which question may be most effective in gathering accurate and useful information. Any question selected for use should be subjected to testing in advance, whenever possible, in order to ensure that the measure performs appropriately.
I have reservations about the TransPop study. I am willing to bet that Gallup does not interview minors, so an increasingly large segment of the transgender population will be excluded from the study. While that may be appropriate in some instances, depending on the questions being asked, it would have a negative effect from the pure population number standpoint.