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

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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.