Mikey Daley

Transgender and non-binary (TNB) people’s interpersonal relationships may fulfill or undermine their gender identity. Cissexism, or stigmatization of one’s TNB identity, has been correlated with increased mental health concerns. However, supportive romantic relationships may instead buffer against these negative psychological impacts, promoting better mental wellbeing. The current study, administered as an online survey to 94 TNB participants, sought to develop and validate a scale to measure identity-related support in TNB people’s platonic relationships and compare this support to support from romantic relationships in the context of psychological distress. Internal consistency and r-values of questions were calculated, and the best-performing items were selected as part of the finalized, ten-question scale. Correlations with convergent and discriminant variables were found; these correlations largely matched the expected results. This, combined with a strong internal consistency (α = 0.92), indicates that the newly developed scale is a viable measure of platonic support. Thus, although there was no significant correlation between platonic support and psychological distress found, directly contradicting previous literature, the scale is appropriate for future research on TNB people’s interpersonal relationships and should be used to explore this topic further.