Poster #116 - Comparing Patterns of Exposure to Adverse Childhood Experiences Between Cisgender and Transgender Individuals

• In Event: Poster Session 09

Abstract

Adverse childhood experiences (ACEs), defined as potentially traumatic and negative life events experienced before the age of 18, have previously been found to be associated with a wide variety of negative psychosocial outcomes in adulthood (e.g., depression, reduced quality of life, substance abuse). Members of gender minorities (e.g., transgender people) face a variety of unique stressors (e.g., transphobia, transmisogyny) and have been found to have worse mental and physical health when compared to the overall population (Meyer et al., 2017). Additionally, previous research has found that transgender people in the United States report experiencing more domains of ACEs than cisgender members of sexual minorities. The intersection between exposure to ACEs and other stressors experienced by transgender individuals is an important area to further investigate, in order to better identify individuals who may be at extreme risk of negative outcomes. Mixture modeling, such as latent class analysis, provides one avenue for better understanding common patterns of exposure to ACEs that transgender individuals might exhibit. Although this approach has been used in multiple studies of the general population, no study to date has assessed latent subgroups of transgender peoples’ exposure to ACEs.

This study used latent class analysis to determine patterns of ACEs in a sample of individuals who responded to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s 2020 Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System, a random-digit dialed national phone survey. Propensity score matching (based on race, age, income, and education level) was used to match 310 transgender individuals with the most similar cisgender individuals in the sample. Multi-group latent class analysis was used to group these individuals into classes based on their pattern of experiencing nine domains of ACEs (household mental illness, household alcoholism, household substance use, incarceration, parental divorce, domestic violence, physical abuse, emotional abuse, and sexual abuse).

A four-class structure was found to best explain the data, based on fit indices (e.g., entropy = 0.859, lowest AIC value), as well as the interpretability of the derived classes. The “Normative” class consisted of 58.8% of cisgender participants and 49.4% of transgender participants. The “Moderate Levels of Household Dysfunction” class consisted of 20.6% of cisgender participants and 27.8% of transgender participants. The “Abuse and Conflict” class consisted of 12.6% of cisgender participants and 12.0% of transgender participants. Finally, the “High-Risk” class consisted of 8.0% of cisgender participants and 11.0% of transgender participants. These findings indicate that the likelihood of belonging to the High-Risk class was considerably higher in transgender individuals than cisgender individuals, while a larger percentage of cisgender participants than transgender participants were sorted into the Normative class. Additional implications and future directions will be discussed.

Authors

• Holly Rae Turner, University of Hawaii at Manoa
  Presenting Author

• Taylor Stacy, University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa