Abstract
Objective: Minority stress contributes to several physical and psychological problems in sexual and gender minorities but is largely understudied in transgender/gender- nonconforming (TGNC) individuals, particularly TGNC adolescents. The availability of psychometrically sound measures of adolescent minority stress can help improve assessment and treatment planning in this area. This original research study examined whether an existing measure of TGNC-related minority stress and resilience among adults could retain construct and psychometric validity when administered to TGNC adolescents. Method: Respondents were 258 TGNC adolescents, aged 12 to 17.99 years (M= 15.1, SD= 1.4), majority White/European American (70.2%) and assigned female at birth (71.7%) seeking care in an interdisciplinary gender-health clinic within a pediatric academic medical center in the Midwestern United States. Respondents completed a battery of clinical measures as standard of care, including the Gender Minority Stress and Resilience (GMSR) measure, measures of anxiety and depressive symptoms, and parental support. Results: Findings indicated that minor adaptation of the existing adult measure resulted in high internal consistency and construct validity across 9 subscales assessing domains of minority stress and resilience in this sample of TGNC adolescents. Conclusions: This study provides evidence of the factor structure, reliability, and validity of an adolescent extension of the GMSR (i.e., GMSR-A). These findings demonstrate the clinical utility of the GMSR-A, a tool that can help increase understanding of minority stress and resilience phenomena experienced by TGNC adolescents.
| Original language | English (US) |
|---|---|
| Pages (from-to) | 278-290 |
| Number of pages | 13 |
| Journal | Clinical Practice in Pediatric Psychology |
| Volume | 7 |
| Issue number | 3 |
| DOIs | |
| State | Published - 2019 |
Funding
The efforts of Marco A. Hidalgo and Diane Chen were supported, in part, by the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development of the National Institutes of Health (NIH) under Award Numbers R01HD097122 and R01HD082554. Diane Chen’s effort was also supported, in part, by NIH Award Number R21HD087839. The content is solely the responsibility of the authors and does not necessarily represent the official views of the NIH.
Keywords
- adolescents
- measurement
- social stigma
- transgender/gender-nonconforming
ASJC Scopus subject areas
- Clinical Psychology
- Developmental and Educational Psychology
- Pediatrics, Perinatology, and Child Health
- Applied Psychology