Transgender EuroStudy – Legal Survey and Focus ... - ILGA Europe

37 April 2008
Methodology
The data gathering and analysis for this research was a collaborative effort, involving researchers,
translators and a systems engineer who built the code for the survey results database. The data for the
following discussion is derived from an English online survey which was then translated into Danish,
Swedish, Maltese, Polish, Russian, German, Greek, French, Dutch, Spanish, Finnish, Italian and Hungarian
and Focus Groups which were hosted in Austria, Finland, France, Holland, Hungary, Italy and Spain.
The Survey
The questions for the online survey were based upon an online survey conducted by Whittle
and Turner (2007) in the UK which was commissioned for the Equalities Review (2007). There were
several changes which had to be made regarding the different classification systems for countries – for
example, occupational class and educational levels. These were changed to follow those used in the
European Social Survey 46 which included categories which were more European-specific. 47 The survey
was written in English and then sent to the translators in different countries. The total number of
questions was 97, asking about the general profile of respondents – age; living arrangements;
occupation; savings; marital status; when they transitioned; disability; employment; earnings; whether
they were living full-time in their acquired gender and what documentation had been changed. Other
questions covered all aspects of life including experiences at work; school; college and university;
neighbourhoods and public spaces; using toilets and leisure facilities and the criminal justice system.
For the purposes of this report, there were twelve questions specifically on healthcare (see Appendix)
which asked questions about accessing clinical treatment as well as experiences of treatment by
healthcare professionals.
The Translators
The translators were recruited by announcements on pan-national trans email lists. Translators
were required to have an extensive and practical experience of the transgender and transsexual
community and a high level of fluency in written and spoken English as well as some experience in
arranging and running focus groups, and/or translation services.
Several issues regarding translation were encountered as much of the language used in the English
version could not be directly translated. Some content had to be negotiated between the translator and the
research team – for example the English term ‘acquired gender’ did not have an equivalent in many
countries, as well as some of the identity categories in the survey: ‘woman with a transsexual background;
trans man’. These issues were solved by translators who, after checking what we were looking for, interpreted
the question and translated it into an equivalent relevant to their country.
46
The European Social
Survey is a biennial
multi-country survey
covering 30 countries
and is funded by the
European Commission –
see
http://ess.nsd.uib.no/.
47
For example with
current migration
patterns the European
Social Survey includes a
question on immigrant
status. The survey also
includes an
occupational class of
agricultural worker.