Over at Trans Group Blog, Angus “Andrea” Grieve-Smith has posted a piece about HHS’s announcement to begin collecting data on LGBTQ issues.
The Department of Health and Human Services has just made a big announcement: they will begin collecting data on LGBT issues, including transgender issues. The goal is to document disparities in health care, as well as plain old disparities in health, so that they can be addressed in the future. The plan is to have two roundtables on “gender identity data collection” with “key experts” this summer and fall, and then the “Data Council” will present a strategy next spring. The department will also collect public comment in various ways, one being through a website called regulations.gov, which is currently down.
If done right, this could be a tremendous help to understanding transgender issues. “The first step is to make sure we are asking the right questions,” HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius told the Washington Post. “Sound data collection takes careful planning to ensure that accurate and actionable data is being recorded.” As I’ve written before, current research on transgender feelings and actions is severely hampered by the lack of any kind of representative sample. Just to give you a quick sense, here are ten very basic questions that nobody knows the answer to:
- How many transgender people are there?
- How common are the various transgender thoughts, feelings and beliefs?
- How common are transgender actions like cross-dressing, body modifications, and “soft mods” like shaving?
- How common are transgender name and pronoun changes?
- How common are part-time cross-living and full time transition?
- How often are sexual activities part of transgender activities?
- How common are diseases and destructive habits among transgender populations?
- How many transgender people are in long-term relationships?
- How often are various subgroups targeted by violence and discrimination?
- How satisfied are transsexuals twenty, thirty or forty years post-transition?
S/he goes onto mention who should and shouldn’t be doing this kind of research (and says something nice about me), but also points out that many of the experts are split into (1) pathologizers, and (2) social service researchers who don’t seem to understand convenience samples and how useless they are when it comes to prevalence. Go read the whole thing. If there are others you feel are doing good research on trans issues, feel free to let Grieve-Smith know.