Grant: Oper. Gra. Adv. 2S_LGBTQI+ Heal. Thr. Resea. - Metho. Measu. Second. Data Analy.

Our team recently developed a questionnaire called GENDER-Q Youth for youth aged 12-25 years. This questionnaire is for youth who identify as transgender or gender diverse and are receiving gender-affirming care. This questionnaire includes 16 sections that ask about important areas of life, such as body image, mental health, social, family and school life, voice concerns, gender expression practices (ie, binding and tucking), and experience of healthcare. To make sure the GENDER-Q Youth works well, we need to test it carefully. We want to make sure it gives us consistent results, measures what it is designed to measure, and can detect changes over time with treatment. In the proposed study, we will collect data from an online sample of 500 transgender and gender-diverse youth. We will also collaborate with healthcare teams in multiple countries to recruit 500 transgender and gender-diverse youth who are starting cross-sex hormone treatment. These participants will be asked to complete the GENDER-Q Youth before starting cross-sex hormones and 3 and 6 months later. We will use the data to determine whether the questionnaire accurately measure youths' experiences and whether it can detect changes after treatment begins. We will also determine the smallest change in score that is meaningful from the young person's perspective. This information is important for future clinical studies and for improving gender-affirming care.