Examining Differences Between Perceived Health and Stigma Amongst Males and Females in the LGBT Community (2024)
Undergraduate: Nikita Bipin
Faculty Advisor: Robert Agans
Department: Biostatistics
The aim of this study is to determine whether AFAB individuals within the LGBT community face more general, physical, and mental health issues than their AMAB counterparts within the LGBT community, which may be mitigated by perceived stigma. The population was built off the previous TCORS study with 11,000 participants. Recruitment was done for participants in the LGBT community and a referral system was implemented to gain more LGBT participants. Measures of interest were gender at birth, perceived general health, mental health, physical health, and stigma. Linear models were created for each health measure. Out of 192 participants, 110 were eligible for the analysis, 50 of which were female and 60 were male. AFABs had higher perception of poor health, mental health, and physical health. When a two tailed t-test was conducted general health and mental health for gender at birth and stigma were statistically significant. This indicated for general health and mental health on average AFAB had a higher number of sick days than AMAB. Furthermore, when a linear model was created for the health indicators, general health and mental health resulted in statistically/marginally significant results in regard to gender at birth. However, the model of physical health was marginally significant for gender at birth and not significant for stigma. The resulting findings for the linear models support the initial hypothesis that there are more health inequalities faced by AFAB than AMAB.
Link to Abstract