Project Recognize

Updating survey measures to reflect LGBTQIA+ identity

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Research Aims. Aim 1: Scoping Review of existing measures. Aim 2: Qualitative data collection of feedback on new measures. Aim 3: Quantitative survey on new measures.

Project Recognize works on comprehensive, validated measurement of demographic characteristics associated with SGM identity and stigmatization – e.g., sex, sexual orientation, and gender identity (SSOGI). Our consideration of differences between identity, behavior, and attraction, along with inclusion of understudied and emerging orientation concepts, allows us to develop flexible standardized measures for use across diverse contexts.

Community engagement, comprehensive identity coverage, and iterative development of these new SSOGI measures will help future researchers pinpoint how SGM identity characteristics relate to health disparities.

Asexual and intersex identities are at the fore of Project Recognize, which will provide the first known validated measures for those communities. Leading our commitment to accuracy, we have official partnerships with InterACT and the Asexual Visibility and Education Network (AVEN). Transgender, non-binary, bisexual, and pansexual SGM identities also receive specific consideration. To increase the span of Americans represented in research of sex characteristics, sexual orientation, and gender identity and expression we have explicit coverage of intersectional demographic characteristics including race, ethnicity, disabilities, and age ranges from youth to elders.

This is a mixed methods project including literature reviews, data collection, data abstraction, community research engagement workshop (CREWs), key informant interviews (KII), focus groups, cognitive debriefing interviews, and development of novel methods. Multiple sites participate including Northwestern University in Chicago, Boston University Medical Center, Duke, and community SMEs nation-wide.

Funding for Project Recognize is provided by an R01 grant from the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism within the National Institutes of Health(NIH) under grant number R01AA029076 (PIs: Beach, Phillips).

Scope

To inform our recommendations, Project Recognize thoroughly reviews how SSOGI data is discussed among the following:

Federal
Surveys

We are reviewing surveys conducted by the federal government that contain SGM questions. By collating this data we ensure we understand the scope of government-asked SSOGI measures.

Peer Reviewed Literature

SSOGI data collection, and research about it, is not new. We are doing a thorough review of this literature to avoid duplicating work and ensuring consideration of previously-studied variables.

Electronic Health Records

Electronic Health Record (EHR) systems differ in their support for SSOGI questions. Medical providers differ in their implementation and configuration for collecting LGBTQIA+ identities. We’re examining systems nationwide to discover and report on the current state of storing sexual orientation, gender identity, and sex characteristic data in individual medical records.

Community Literature

New LGBTQIA+ specific identity terms are emerging all the time. The way the LGBTQIA+ community describes itself is very different than academic or medical contexts. Our community team is gathering data to scope the multi-faceted, lived experiences of queer identity.

Team

Project Recognize’s research team is headquartered at Northwestern University in Illinois. We also have teams at Duke and Boston University Medical Center, as well as LGBTQIA+ leaders throughout the United States. It’s housed under the Institute for Sexual and Gender Minority Health and Wellbeing (ISGMH) and affiliated with the ADVOCATE and EDIT programs.