Gender Affirmation through Correct Pronoun Usage: Development and Validation of the Transgender Women’s Importance of Pronouns (TW-IP) Scale

Jae M. Sevelius, Deepalika Chakravarty, Samantha E. Dilworth, Greg Rebchook and Torsten B. Neilands
Additional contact information
Jae M. Sevelius: Center for AIDS Prevention Studies, Department of Medicine, University of California, San Francisco, CA 94158, USA
Deepalika Chakravarty: Center for AIDS Prevention Studies, Department of Medicine, University of California, San Francisco, CA 94158, USA
Samantha E. Dilworth: Center for AIDS Prevention Studies, Department of Medicine, University of California, San Francisco, CA 94158, USA
Greg Rebchook: Center for AIDS Prevention Studies, Department of Medicine, University of California, San Francisco, CA 94158, USA
Torsten B. Neilands: Center for AIDS Prevention Studies, Department of Medicine, University of California, San Francisco, CA 94158, USA

IJERPH, 2020, vol. 17, issue 24, 1-13

Abstract: Social interactions where a person is addressed by their correct name and pronouns, consistent with their gender identity, are widely recognized as a basic and yet critical aspect of gender affirmation for transgender people. Informed by the Model of Gender Affirmation, we developed a self-report measure of the importance of social gender affirmation, the Transgender Women’s Importance of Pronouns (TW-IP) scale, which measures gender affirmation through the usage of correct pronoun by others. Data were from self-administered surveys in two independent samples of transgender women living with HIV in the US (N1 = 278; N2 = 369). Using exploratory factor analysis with data from Study 1 and confirmatory factor analysis with data from Study 2, we obtained a four-item scale with a single-factor structure and strong reliability (α = 0.95). We present evidence of TW-IP’s convergent and discriminant validity through its correlations with select mental health and HIV-related measures. Further, scores on TW-IP were linked in expected directions to several hypothesized mental health and HIV care outcomes, demonstrating its predictive validity. The resulting brief measure of importance of pronouns among transgender women shows strong psychometric properties. Validation evidence offers highly promising opportunities for use of the measure in clinical and research settings.

Keywords: scale development; scale validation; transgender women; gender affirmation; pronouns; HIV care; mental health (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I I1 I3 Q Q5 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2020
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/1660-4601/17/24/9525/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/1660-4601/17/24/9525/ (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gam:jijerp:v:17:y:2020:i:24:p:9525-:d:464902

Access Statistics for this article

IJERPH is currently edited by Ms. Jenna Liu

More articles in IJERPH from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().