Yellow graphic with megaphone. Text reads "Do you use adaptive equipment or assistive technology to get around, communicate, or complete tasks? Have you ever had trouble getting the equipment and technology you need? Have you ever struggled to get your equipment repaired or to make your equipment work better for you?" Link is https://tinyurl.com/disabilitytechjustice

Disability and Technology Policy Survey

Posted on by Grayson Schultz

Researchers at Purdue University are studying how disability and technology policy can change to make life better for people who use adaptive equipment and assistive technology:

We are investigating how people with disabilities in the United States qualify for, access, and maintain adaptive and assistive technologies. This study explores people’s experiences with acquiring, maintaining, and advocating for assistive and adaptive technology. We are collecting this information to inform future technology design, changes in technology policy, and to support a public information campaign, all of which we hope will improve technology access for people with disabilities in the United States. Your participation in this study will take 10-20 minutes of your time.

You are being asked to participate in this survey because you are a person with a disability who uses adaptive or assistive technology. We would like to enroll at least 250 people in this study. The survey will close if we reach 1000 responses. In total, this project will involve up to 1120 participants across multiple stakeholder groups and data collection methods.

You will be asked a series of questions about your experiences with adaptive and assistive technology. After completion of the survey, you are invited to email the researchers if you are interested in participating in longer format interviews about the same topic.

The survey will take approximately 20 minutes or less.

To participate or for more details, click here.

Research Opportunity for Folks in Recovery from Drug and Alcohol Use Disorder

Research Opportunity for Folks in Recovery from Drug and Alcohol Use Disorder

Posted on by Grayson Schultz

One of my friends is currently working on collecting data for his PhD. Please see below.

Aaron M. Laxton, student in the school of social work at Saint Louis University, is inviting you to participate in this research study.

The title of this study is “Examining Spatial Reasoning in Individuals Recovering from Drug and Alcohol Use Disorder”. The purpose of this study is to measure spatial reasoning among individuals who are recovering from drug and alcohol abuse. A secondary objective is to assess the effects of substance abuse and recovery on spatial reasoning.

Your participation in this study will involve participating in an online survey. The study proposes that it will take 5 minutes to complete the survey.

Participation in this study will not benefit you directly. Your participation may benefit others by expanding knowledge regarding strategies, interventions, services provision, and accessibility that enhance the overall wellbeing of international students

The risks to the participant are minimal and include loss of anonymity. To minimize this risk, the study team will not collect any identifiable information including IP addresses. Study data will only be accessible to the study team. You may experience participant distress or discomfort experienced because of answering questions on survey instruments or feel pressure to answer questions or to provide responses in assessments. This pressure may cause stress or distress. To minimize these risks, you can choose not to answer any question that makes you uncomfortable.

The results of this study may be published in scientific research journals or presented at professional conferences. However, your name and identity will not be revealed, and your record will remain anonymous. Data collection instruments will not request any personally identifiable information.

You can choose not to participate. If you decide not to participate, there will not be a penalty for you or the loss of any benefits to which you are otherwise entitled. You may withdraw from this study at any time.

If you would like to look more into this study – or complete the survey – please click here.

Pre-Order “Keeping It Real with Arthritis” Today!

Posted on by Grayson Schultz

photo contains the same information that is written in text in the post

Featuring over 100 worldwide, personal stories written by passionate and inspiring individuals living with arthritis, and their supporters; parents, caretakers, and medical professionals. Ranging from heartfelt, hopeful, motivating, and empowering, to heart-wrenchingly eye-opening, these stories shine a light on the realities of everyday life with arthritis and related conditions. Readers will get a first-hand look at the good, the bad, and everything in between, from those who are experts in lived experience and clinical matters. This book is not only a collective effort to raise awareness that arthritis is more than just a disorder that affects the joints and highlights that people of all ages can get arthritis. Most importantly, it explains there are hundreds of different forms of arthritis that impact all areas of life in profound ways, from physical limitations, mental health, social lives, relationships, faith and spirituality, finances, and work and career life balance.

One chapter is written by yours truly!

You can pre-order the book up until the release date – December 6, 2022 – here.

The U.S. Trans Survey is now open! [closed]

Posted on by Grayson Schultz

The following is from an email sent out by the U.S. Trans Survey Team @ National Center for Transgender Equality yesterday (10-19):

take the us trans survey

We’re proud to announce that the U.S. Trans Survey is now open and ready for you to take! Whether you pledged to take the survey or not, you can take the survey today!!

As trans people, we know that we’ve accomplished incredible things together as a community. Join thousands of other people folks around the country in sharing your experience to create a clear picture of what it’s like to be trans in the United States.

If you are trans and plan to take the survey, here’s what you need to know:

  • The survey is open to people of all trans identities (binary and nonbinary), ages 16 and older, living in the United States and U.S. territories, regardless of citizenship status.
  • If you pledged to take the survey, you are not obligated to take the survey. Participation is voluntary. When you click on the link to start the survey, you will be asked to consent to take the survey.
  • The U.S. Trans Survey is an anonymous survey. Your response will be kept confidential and will not be used to identify you.
  • The time required to take the survey may vary, but make sure to set aside at least 60 minutes to take the survey.
  • The survey will be available in both English and Spanish.
  • Please let your trans friends and siblings know about the survey too!

The U.S. Trans Survey is being conducted by the National Center for Transgender Equality in partnership with the National Black Trans Advocacy Coalition, TransLatin@ Coalition, and National Queer Asian Pacific Islander Alliance.

If you have any questions, please reach out at ustranssurvey@transequality.org.

Again, thank you so much for being part of this important survey. We’re excited to see the results!

Click here to take the survey now!

With love and solidarity,

The U.S. Trans Survey Team

Survey About How Social Media Increases Anti-Trans Ideals

Posted on by Grayson Schultz

the role of social media in facilitating anti-gender mobilizing and their impact on tgdi movements

The following is from the webpage on this survey:

We want to explore the impact of global anti-gender movements on trans, gender diverse (TGD) and wider LGBTQI mobilizing and rights and the role of social media in facilitating anti-gender mobilizing and discourses.

The anti-gender movement is an international movement which opposes what it refers to as gender ideology, gender theory, or genderism (Kováts, Eszter, 2016). Today, social media plays a huge role in disinformation currencies that perpetuate anti-gender mobilizing. If you’re a trans or gender diverse person, is very likely that you’ve encountered anti-gender movements. We’re creating a survey to collect data that can help us counteract these movements, and we need your help! This survey was created for people who are part of organizations or unregistered collectives working on trans, gender diverse or wider LGBQ communities and issues.

It takes about 20-30 minutes to fill out this questionnaire. You are welcome to send us your complaints or other types of feedback to research@gate.ngo. Considering the safety issues in many contexts relating to reporting on anti-gender opposition and/or being an activist or a community member, you will have the opportunity to stay anonymous. This is also available in Russian and Spanish.

If you’re interested in participating, click here.

The 2022 Gender Census is open! [closed]

Posted on by Grayson Schultz

The 2022 Gender Census is open!

This survey is open to anyone, in any country, of any age, whose experience of their gender doesn’t fit tidily into the strict binary of female/male. It seeks broad statistical data about the language we use to refer to ourselves in English, e.g. pronouns, identity words, and titles. The results will be made public for use in activism, self-advocacy, business, and academia.

Helpful information:

  • It is international and open to anyone, anywhere.
  • The survey aims to collect information about the language we use to refer to ourselves.
  • Most of the survey asks about three things: identity words, pronouns and titles.
  • There is a feedback box at the end.
  • Most people find that it takes 5 minutes or less.
  • You can read the FAQs here.

This is a volunteer-run, crowdfunded project. They don’t pay for any advertising at all, and the >44,000 responses last year were gathered entirely by word-of-mouth.

If you’re into that kind of thing, click here to take part: survey.gendercensus.com

Rites of Passage Study

Posted on by Grayson Schultz

Sharing the following opportunity as listed on my friend ink’s substack:

Rites of passage research is incredibly important to me in my journey of recovery and becoming. Through initiating to adulthood in community, to learning to truly be alone, rites of passage work has fostered an unwavering sense of knowingness and purpose into my life that I hope all young people get the privilege to experience.

We have all grown up in vastly different ways. Qualitatively, there is no one growing up story alike another.

With this, we want to know more about how you grew up.

We are building an understanding of how our generation of young people have come into age as we seek to understand its impacts on health, toward future programs.

This is an incentivized opportunity ($20 bookstore giftcard) to contribute to the advancement of rites research, as we move toward implementing ways of knowing and being that support growing up.

These questions are in-depth and may be uncomfortable. Only engage if you feel you have the time to donate your story to the cause. Otherwise, please feel free to disregard or send feedback.

Find everything you need to know here, and thank you for supporting the research.

New research findings from The PRIDE Study

Posted on by Grayson Schultz

The Pride Study is the first national longitudinal (aka long-term) study of the LGBTQ+ community. To join as a participant, you need to be living in the US (or US territories), be 18+ years old, and be able to read and understand English. You also need to be a part of the LGBTQ+ community (duh!). You can learn more here.

 

The journal Neurology has also published the latest findings from The PRIDE Study. This study is important because it is the first to look specifically at LGBTQ+ people’s experiences with headaches and the connections with trauma. This study illustrates how common headaches and migraines are for LGBTQ+ people.

What Did We Learn?

A total of 3,325 participants took the survey; 2,142 (64%) reported experiencing headaches and 1,126 (34%) reported experiencing migraines. On average, most people with migraines reported the strength was moderate or severe and frequent or strong enough to experience migraine-related disability, meaning the migraines affected their ability to participate in work, school, or home life. If they had a history of trauma and discrimination, they also were more likely to have migraines frequent or strong enough to experience migraine-related disability. However, for participants who had a history of depression, anxiety, or post-traumatic stress disorder, those who also had a history of trauma and discrimination were not more likely to experience migraine-related disability compared to those without a history of trauma and discrimination. This suggests that mental health conditions play an important role in experiencing migraine-related disability. Most of the people with migraines had access to a clinic or doctor’s office for healthcare (88%). About 42% of people with migraines wanted to see a specialist. However, 37% of this group had difficulty seeing a specialist, with the most common reason being that their insurance did not approve it. Additional reasons include their primary care doctor did not place the referral, the specialist was not accepting new patients, there were no specialists in their town or city, or the specialist refused to see them.

What Does This Mean for Our Communities?

This study showed that headaches and migraines are common for LGBTQ+ people, similar to the general public. We learned that many LGBTQ+ people with migraines do not have access to a specialist to help provide treatment. This can mean that headaches are not treated as well as they could be, which is important for primary care doctors to be aware of. LGBTQ+ people should also consider how their experiences with trauma, discrimination, and/or mental health conditions may have a connection with their experiences with migraines.

What’s Next?

Further education is needed for healthcare providers and specialists about the experiences of LGBTQ+ people with headaches. Studies about migraines or their treatment should collect information about sexual orientation and gender identity from participants to further understand how LGBTQ+ people are affected. Further research is needed to look at the barriers that LGBTQ+ people face when it comes to accessing healthcare, including looking at other aspects of their identity, such as race, ethnicity, or income level. The connection between depression, anxiety, and post-traumatic stress disorder with migraines should also be looked at further, as treatments for these mental health conditions may also help reduce the effects of migraines.

Further Reading

Rosendale N, Guterman EL, Obedin-Maliver J, Flentje A, Capriotti MR, Lubensky ME, Lunn MR. Migraine, migraine disability, trauma, and discrimination in sexual and gender minority individuals. Neurology Jul 2022, 10.1212/WNL.0000000000200941. https://doi.org/10.1212/WNL.0000000000200941.

We combined data from The PRIDE Study’s 2018 Annual Questionnaire and state healthcare policy protections from the Movement Advancement Project to understand whether state policies are related to decisions to avoiding healthcare among transgender and non-binary people.

This is the first study to look at the role of healthcare anti-discrimination policies in a state and whether the presence of those policies is related to the choice to avoid seeking healthcare among transgender and non-binary people.

What Did We Learn?

We found that experiencing poor treatment in healthcare related to one’s gender identity or expression was related to avoiding healthcare services in the past year. We found that the presence of state healthcare anti-discrimination policies did not change the relationship between poor treatment in healthcare and someone avoiding healthcare services in the past year.

What Does This Mean for Our Communities?

Transgender and non-binary people who live in states with healthcare anti-discrimination policies still avoid seeking healthcare. This is concerning because it increases the risk of poor health because illnesses may go untreated and health concerns may go un-diagnosed.

What’s Next?

We need to look at how healthcare anti-discrimination policies are put in place and how individuals and healthcare organizations are held accountable when poor experiences are reported. There is also an opportunity to look at ways to communicate with transgender and non-binary communities about what the policies in their state are and what their options are when poor treatment happens. We also need to look at how healthcare decisions are made by sub-communities within trans communities, such as trans people of color and trans people who may be undocumented.

Further Reading

Clark, K.D., Luong, S., Lunn, M.R., Flowers, E., Bahalkeh, E., Lubensky, M.E., et al. Healthcare Mistreatment, State-Level Policy Protections, and Healthcare Avoidance Among Gender Minority People. Sex Res Social Policy. 2022. Epub 2022, July 15. doi:10.1007/s13178-022-00748-1

Muscle dysmorphia means that someone is worried about not being muscular enough. Gender-expansive people do not identify as being exclusively a man or exclusively a woman. We asked gender-expansive people in The PRIDE Study to fill out a widely used survey in health research about this issue.

This was the first study to use these survey questions with gender-expansive people.

What Did We Learn?

We found three categories of concerns that gender-expansive people have about muscles: 1) a desire to be bigger and more muscular, 2) a dissatisfaction with the way their body looks, and 3) problems with normal life functions (such as passing up social activities because of their workout schedule).

What Does This Mean for Our Communities?

This survey is appropriate for use with gender-expansive people to understand their concerns around muscles. These results can help providers and researchers understand the muscle-related problems that gender-expansive people are having and ask better questions to provide them with better care.

What’s Next?

We want to study concerns about muscles among transgender women.

Further Reading

Compte EJ, Cattle CJ, Lavender JM, Brown TA, Murray SB, Capriotti MR, Flentje A, Lubensky ME, Obedin-Maliver J, Lunn MR, Nagata JM. Psychometric evaluation of the Muscle Dysmorphic Disorder Inventory (MDDI) among gender-expansive people. J Eat Disord. 2022 July;10:95. doi: https://doi.org/10.1186/s40337-022-00618-6

Abortion and Reproductive Justice

Posted on by Grayson Schultz

abortion and reproductive justice

In the wake of the SCOTUS decision to end Roe v Wade, I know many of us are feeling frustrated, lost, or deflated. Take your time to feel those feelings, but return to the movement toward universal rights when ready.

If you’re looking to learn more about talking about abortion, ensure that you do so inclusively:

  • Use language that includes trans men, transmasculine and nonbinary folks, and others outside the gender binary. One great example is this inclusive birthing language resource.
  • Ensure that you’re creating accessible resources by learning more about accessibility in general.
  • Do not engage in bigotry to prove your point. SCOTUS making this decision isn’t akin to ‘sharia law,’ and saying so is Islamaphobic.
  • Don’t say that we should ban erectile dysfunction medications, too. Removing bodily autonomy for one group will not bring it back for another. Plus, many disabled folks and trans folks rely on these medications to access intimacy.

You can learn more about discussing abortion inclusively via a recent Substack post of mine.

Reproductive Justice Resources

Participate in the International Kink Health Study

Posted on by Grayson Schultz

KINK HEALTH Adventurous people deserve exceptional care. kinkhealth.org TASHRA presents an international health study and invites YOU to learn if you are eligible. Go to kinkhealth.org Do you have recurring, long-standing fantasies that focus on kink, bondage, and fetish? Our goals: • The IKHS will document the prevalence of injuries and medical complications arising from kink activities • Examine the health status of kink-involved people; and document how healthcare is utilized by kink The involved people International • Investigate how connections to kink communities Kink Health affect people's health and well-being Study (IKHS) Contact us with other questions at KinkHealth2@protonmail.com *Complete a short survey to determine your eligibility for this study at kinkhealth.org

The International Kink Health Study is now LIVE!

The International Kink Health Study (IKHS) is a research project about the physical and mental health, childhood experience, sexuality and healthcare of those around the world with recurring fantasies and practices that involve kink/BDSM/leather and fetish.

An expansion of our 2016 research survey, this study plans to invite participants to become part of a group of kink interested people from around the world. We will ask them to complete yearly surveys over a number of years. We hope that they will help us understand more about what it means to be kinky, about their health and wellbeing, their kink lives and pleasure, their relationships and roles, their injuries and their experiences of healing.

We are researchers with deep roots in the kink community and who want to make sure that this information benefits the kink community. Won’t you think about joining with us on our upcoming adventure?

Want to learn more, see if you’re eligible, or take the survey?
Pop over to the study’s website today.