New Teen Gender Questioning Study

Our colleagues at CNN passed on this report conducted by Dr. Kacie Kidd a physician & adolescent medicine fellow at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center Children's Hospital of Pittsburgh who conducted a study that instead of asking teens if they were transgender Kidd & colleagues asked two questions in a study of 3,168 high school students at 13 racially & economically diverse public Pittsburgh high schools that resulted in a more honest inquiry. The first question was: "What is your sex (the sex you were assigned at birth, on your birth certificate)?" with the options of "female" & "male." The second question was: "Which of the following best describes you (select all that apply)?" with the options of "girl," "boy," "trans girl," "trans boy," "genderqueer," "nonbinary” & "another identity." The study published in the June 2021 issue of the journal Pediatrics found that 9.2% of kids consider themselves gender-diverse in some way. Dr. Kacie Kidd stated, "Our goal was to understand the prevalence of gender-diverse identities among high school students in our Pittsburgh school district by asking what we considered to be & what many scholars consider to be, a more inclusive question about gender identity. We came in suspecting that this two-step gender identity question would demonstrate a higher prevalence of gender diversity than in prior studies.” They found that gender diverse & non-binary teens exist in much higher numbers. Kidd concluded, “They are all unique individuals who have different needs & interests. We should be supporting them as a community in living their authentic lives, whatever that looks like for them."

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