11. Knowledge and Awareness of Gender-Affirming Language Among Cisgender Adolescents and Their Guardians

Background

Relative to their age-matched cisgender peers, transgender adolescents are more likely to suffer from mental health disorders and are at higher risk of self-harm and suicide. Social support, including use of gender-affirming language, from peers and family has been shown to be protective against these untoward mental health outcomes. We hypothesize that adolescents are more likely to positively relate to gender-affirming language than their guardian. We aim to assess the baseline knowledge and awareness of gender-affirming language among cisgender adolescents and their guardian and to examine the respective concordance or dissonance within the adolescent-guardian dyad.

Methods

Adolescents aged 14-21 seen in the Pediatric and Adolescent Gynecology clinic and their guardians were invited to participate in a voluntary survey regarding gender-affirming language. Adolescents ages 18-21 completed the survey without parental consent. No protected health information was gathered. Respondents completed the survey via a tablet with access to a RedCap-based questionnaire. Patients were asked to self-report their demographics including age, race, ethnicity, extent of education, and religion. Assuming a rate of acceptance of gender-affirming language among adolescents of 25% and 12.5% among guardians, 152 dyad respondents were needed to reach a power of 80%. Aggregate data from each generation and paired dyad data were analyzed using a Chi-square test for categorical data and student's t-test for continuous variables. Institutional IRB approval was obtained.

Results

Adolescent respondents were more likely to have pronouns they prefer (p< 0.0001) and to recognize the importance of using a person's preferred pronouns (p=0.002) compared to adult respondents (Table 1). Adolescents were also more receptive to being asked their preferred pronouns, relative to the adult respondents (p=0.001). These questions were statistically significant when comparing adolescents to guardians in the paired dyad (Table 2). Self-reported level of education positively correlated with having preferred pronouns, being receptive to being asked their preferred pronouns, and utilizing a person's preferred pronouns (all p< 0.05). Black race was also associated with having preferred pronouns (p=0.03).

Conclusions

Adolescents in this cohort demonstrated a greater awareness of the importance of gender-affirming language compared to adults. Limitations of this study are that it is single site and may not be representative of all patient populations. Surveys were also obtained with both adolescent and guardian present which may have influenced responses from either or both groups.