Development and Validation of the Transgender Inclusive Behavior Scale

Purpose:

Transgender inclusive behavior can be words and actions that support transgender individuals/communities; both explicitly and implicitly. Examples may include using language that does not reinforce the gender binary, asking for/using correct pronouns, supporting the creation of spaces that welcome members of the transgender community, and acknowledging cisgender (non-transgender privilege).  By developing a tool to measure this positive behavior, the investigators hope to examine the impact of transgender inclusive behavior and the effect of interventions on promoting this behavior.

Method:

Thirty items were developed by the authors along with transgender researchers and advocates to measure behavior that is inclusive of transgender individuals in order to create a Transgender Inclusive Behavior Scale (TIBS). Four experts in transgender equity and education rated items on whether they were clear, easy to answer, relevant to this scale and formulated well. Their responses on a 5-point scale were averaged; any items averaging under 4.0 were dropped in order to support content validity. Twenty-three items were retained for the scale development survey. Data were collected using an online survey (N= 1,051) that included a 5-point scale ranging from never to always. Data were cleaned to include those who responded to all 23 items.

Results:

In order to find evidence addressing validity, the sample was split in half to run two sets of cases in a Principal Components Analysis. Cases were randomly assigned numbers between 0 and 1. Those less than or equal to 0.50 were assigned a split case number of 0, while those greater than 0.50 were assigned a split case number of 1. Items which had a mean below 1.0 or above 4.0 were removed as there was little variability in these items, resulting in 15 items being kept in both groups. Sample A: n = 431, M = 3.27, Cronbach’s Alpha of .93 with one factor explaining 52.10% of the variance while Sample B: n = 487, M = 3.10, Cronbach’s Alpha of .92 with one factor explaining 48.90% of the variance. There was no statistical difference in the means between the two groups. The scree plots and parallel analyses both resulted in retaining only one factor for both groups, and both had similarly high loadings of over .5 on this single factor. Analysis of the full sample showed Cronbach’s Alpha to be .93 (n= 918), supporting internal consistency.

A statistically significant difference was found between the scores for transgender individuals (n = 277, M = 3.702) and cisgender individuals (n= 635, M = 2.990); t(634.313) = 13.723, p  < .001 offering further support for construct validity as transgender people would be more likely to be aware of and demonstrate transgender inclusive behavior than their cisgender counterparts.

Implications:

The findings from this study suggest the TIBS may be a useful instrument for identifying social work practitioners’ behaviors related to being inclusive of transgender clients in individual, group and community practice. It might also be used to measure behavior change before and after an educational intervention.