School-Related Victimization Across Subgroups of Transgender Individuals: Implications for Psychological Wellbeing and Educational Attainment

Background/Purpose: National survey data shows individuals who identify as transgender are more likely to experience victimization in grades K-12 than their heteronormative counterparts and are at greater risk of experiencing problems with psychological adjustment and lower levels of educational attainment as adults. Despite these concerns, very few empirical studies have explored the prevalence and consequences of school victimization towards transgender youth. Moreover, existing studies are limited in scope, as explorations of victimization have been considered homogenously among transgender people. Such lack of knowledge poses limits to our understanding about the complexities of victimization towards transgender individuals and prevents us from providing the targeted interventions they need to be protected while in school. To begin to address this gap, this study describes rates and types of victimization among subgroups of transgender individuals, and investigates the extent to which victimization and factors of psychological wellbeing and educational attainment are associated.

Methods: This is a cross-sectional study using secondary data from the National Transgender Discrimination Survey (NTDS). The NTDS is the first of its kind and thus, is the only dataset available with a large enough sample to examine differences in victimization across subgroups of transgendered individuals. The NTDS includes the retrospective reports of victimization during K-12 of 6,436 self-identified transgendered adults, ages 18 and older, and includes specific indicators of psychological functioning and levels of primary and postsecondary degree completion. We first describe rates of victimization by type of incident, schooling level, and perpetrator status across five age cohorts and fifteen different identity groupings of transgender individuals. We then use logistic regression to estimate associations between categories of school-related victimization and psychological wellbeing and levels of educational attainment.

Results: School-related victimization was extensive for all transgender individuals; however, the prevalence and types of victimization varied across both age and transgender groupings. Categorical rates of victimization tended to increase as cohorts aged, and in most cases, for individuals identified with more conspicuous gender identity/expression groupings. For example, individuals ages 45 years and older, and persons who identified as male to female (MTF), were more likely to report experiences of victimization for all types, compared to younger aged individuals or feminine male identified persons. Estimated associations confirmed that all types of school-related victimization had strong (OR>3), negative associations with psychosocial wellbeing and moderate (OR=1.6-3.0), negative associations with levels of educational attainment. Further, the earlier the schooling level at onset, and the more frequent an individual’s experience with victimization, the stronger the associations were among these variables.

Conclusions/Implications: This study is one of the first of its kind to closely examine types of anti-transgender victimization within educational settings. Findings offer important insights about how victimization varies across age and identity groupings and suggests that levels of victimization are closely are related to psychological wellbeing and the educational trajectories of transgender individuals. Results of this study will help to build a framework of knowledge from which to develop further hypotheses and explore other important issues related to how transgender individuals are faring in our nation’s schools.