Social Preferences Among Transgender, Gender Nonconforming, and Gender Typical Children

该奖项是作为NSF的社会，行为和经济科学博士后研究奖学金（SPRF）计划的一部分提供的。SPRF计划的目标是为学术界，工业或私营部门和政府的科学事业准备有前途的早期职业博士级科学家。SPRF的奖励包括在知名科学家的赞助下进行两年的培训，并鼓励博士后研究员进行独立研究。NSF致力于促进来自科学界各部门的科学家，包括来自代表性不足的群体的科学家参与其研究计划和活动;博士后期间被认为是实现这一目标的专业发展的重要水平。每个博士后研究员必须解决推进各自学科领域的重要科学问题。在普林斯顿大学克里斯蒂娜·奥尔森博士的赞助下，这个博士后奖学金支持一位早期职业科学家调查性别多样化的青年和青少年如何看待社会世界。普林斯顿大学的TransYouth项目是一项全国性的纵向研究，对青春期前变性和性别歧视青年及其兄弟姐妹的最大样本进行了研究。该项目涉及性别发展研究领域的一个长期问题。也就是说，迄今为止，几乎所有的理论和实证方法都假设孩子出生时被分配的性别与他们现实的性别认同相匹配。虽然这对许多人来说是真的，但近年来，变性人--那些认同与纳塔尔性别相反的性别的人--已经获得了更多的关注。因此，时机已经成熟，发展研究人员扩大他们的理论范围，包括性别多样化的青年。自我披露自己的身份是许多好处的前兆，例如获得社会肯定和围绕自己的身份建立社区。然而，跨性别青年必须考虑到可能随之而来的歧视和欺凌的可能性。跨性别青年如何在选择公开还是隐藏自己的身份之间做出判断是很重要的，但人们还没有很好地理解，这个题为“跨性别、性别不一致和典型性别儿童的社会偏好”的项目有两个目标。首先，该项目评估跨性别青少年（13-18岁）如何评价他们向其透露性别身份的人（目标1）。这一目标采用了一种混合方法的方法，使用主题分析，以确定与青少年的成功披露的经验，衡量他们所选择的知己的支持水平的青少年的评级相关的主题。第二，该项目经验性地评估了幼儿如何根据潜在知己的特征，包括其朋友群体的性别多样性组成，在第三人称环境中推理披露决定（目标2a）。最后，这项工作将研究是否跨性别青少年的评价，他们的知己是一致的，年轻的跨性别儿童的推理对他人的披露决定（目标2b）。该项目推进了科学知识，有可能为性别多样的个人提供更好的结果。此外，这项工作将提供一个经验基础，如何更好地支持性别多样性的个人，通过评估儿童如何跨性别认同光谱的原因有关的好处和负担的性别认同披露。这个奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并已被认为是值得通过使用基金会的智力价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估的支持。

This award was provided as part of NSF's Social, Behavioral and Economic Sciences Postdoctoral Research Fellowships (SPRF) program. The goal of the SPRF program is to prepare promising, early career doctoral-level scientists for scientific careers in academia, industry or private sector, and government. SPRF awards involve two years of training under the sponsorship of established scientists and encourage Postdoctoral Fellows to perform independent research. NSF seeks to promote the participation of scientists from all segments of the scientific community, including those from underrepresented groups, in its research programs and activities; the postdoctoral period is considered to be an important level of professional development in attaining this goal. Each Postdoctoral Fellow must address important scientific questions that advance their respective disciplinary fields. Under the sponsorship of Dr. Kristina Olson at Princeton University, this postdoctoral fellowship award supports an early career scientist investigating how gender diverse youth and teens reason about the social world. The TransYouth project at Princeton is a national, longitudinal study of the largest sample of prepubescent transgender and gender nonconforming youth and their siblings. This project addresses a longstanding issue in the field of gender development research. Namely, that virtually all theorizing and empirical approaches to date assume that the sex a child is assigned at birth matches their lived gender identity. Although this is true for many, in recent years transgender individuals—those who identify with the gender opposite their natal sex—have gained more visibility. Thus, the time is ripe for developmental researchers to broaden the scope of their theorizing to include gender diverse youth. Self-disclosure of one’s identity is a precursor to many benefits, such as receiving social affirmation and building community around one’s identity. However, transgender youth must take into consideration the potential for discrimination and bullying that may follow. How transgender youth adjudicate between the option to disclose rather than conceal their identity is important, but not well understood.The goal of the project, entitled "Social Preferences Among Transgender, Gender Nonconforming, and Gender Typical Children" is twofold. First the project assesses how transgender teenagers (13-18 years) evaluate those whom they have disclosed their gender identity to (Aim 1). This aim employs a mixed-methods approach using thematic analysis to identify themes associated with teens’ successful disclosure experiences, as measured by the teens’ ratings of their chosen confidants’ levels of support. Second, the project empirically assesses how young children reason about disclosure decisions in a third-person context based on the characteristics of potential confidants, including the composition of their friend groups with respect to gender diversity (Aim 2a). Finally, this work will examine whether transgender teens’ evaluations of their confidants is consistent with younger transgender children’s reasoning about others’ disclosure decisions (Aim 2b). This project advances scientific knowledge that has the potential to support better outcomes for gender diverse individuals. Further, this work will provide an empirical basis for how to better support gender diverse individuals by assessing how children across the gender identity spectrum reason about the benefits and burdens of gender identity disclosure.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.