Psychological Assessment Considerations Series: Considerations for personality assessment with transgender and gender-expansive clients (With CE)

Description

Presenters: Tiffany Russell & Kelci Davis

Overview:

Assessment services often include an evaluation of one’s personality functioning, and the most common personality assessments include gender-specific norming samples. While incorporating gendered norms limits stereotype threat, testing bias, and discrimination (particularly against cisgender women; Mason et al., 2017), few instruments go beyond the gender binary and consider transgender and gender expansive (TGE) clients in their norming samples. This presents a challenge for providers working within TGE populations. Fundamentally, complications begin when examiners must select the TGE client’s sex based on the gender binary, and they persist throughout data interpretation, case conceptualization, and report-writing (Webb et al., 2016). In this webinar, we review current empirical findings, theoretical considerations, and future directions for personality assessment in TGE clients. We also review the Gender Affirmative Model (GAM; Hidalgo et al., 2013), the Gender Minority Stress Model (Hendricks & Testa, 2012; Meyer, 2003), and current APA ethical guidelines (APA, 2017; 2020) and recommendations (e.g., Keo-Meier & Fitzgerald, 2017) as they apply to personality assessment with TGD clients.

Learning Objectives:

1. Discuss current empirical findings, theoretical considerations, and future directions for personality assessment research in the transgender and gender expansive (TGE)
2. Describe the challenges TGE clients face when participating in personality
3. Assess how different TGE experiences (e.g., gender euphoria, discrimination, transitioning) affect their personality functioning, well-being, and
4. Apply the Gender Affirmative Model, the Gender Minority Stress Model, and APA recommendations to personality assessment in TGE