Transgender Poor Nutrition: Adverse Health Impacts & Inequalities - Essay Sample

Introduction

Poor nutritional habits have, over time, been rampant in the transgender community, mainly because of reasons associated with discrimination. Inadequate intake of nutrients has adverse effects on transgender women and men, leading to cardiovascular diseases, reduced bone density, and impaired glucose metabolism, among other adverse effects. The transgender community is also susceptible to high rates of HIV, body image issues, and food insecurity as a result of unemployment and poor living standards. In a bid to help solve the social problem and enable the transgender community to have access to quality nutritional care, I have recommended several interventions to be adopted. Some of the recommended interventions include improved cultural competency of the healthcare providers and integration of physical examination tools that are more accurate in assessing the nutritional needs of the transgender persons. Other recommendations include creating social awareness on the need to treat the members of the transgender community equally in terms of employment and social services delivery and creating a non-judgmental environment that does not necessarily put pressure on the transgender persons to achieve specific body standards. The aim of this paper is to create a research design that would evaluate the effectiveness of the above recommendations if they were to be implemented. This paper will also analyze the non-discrimination policy relating to the transgender community using the Chamber's model. Evaluation of policies is a critical aspect in social work because it enables the relevant parties to assess whether the policies are effective and sufficient in solving the intended social problem or whether the policies need to be restructured.

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Methodology

This study will primarily be based on a qualitative research approach. The qualitative research approach used in this study includes the phenomenological approach, which involves studying a small group of the people out of the population through extensive engagements for an extended period (Tracy, 2019). The research will also utilize the ethnographic approach, which will involve the observation and interaction of the researcher with a small group of transgender women and men in their natural environment (Tracy, 2019). The case study strategy will also be extensively used in this research, where the researcher will conduct an in-depth investigation of the transgender community in general, within their real-life context (Tracy, 2019).

The rationale for the Qualitative Research Approach

A qualitative research approach was strategically chosen for this study because its approaches enable a researcher to have a deeper understanding of how certain groups of people in the society manage their situations on a day-to-day basis (Lewis, 2015). The qualitative research approach is also crucial in the assessment of the impact of various reforms and interventions towards a particular group of people (Lewis, 2015). The phenomenological method, for instance, is particularly crucial in shedding light on the overall experiences of the transgender community, before and after the implementation of the interventions. The study of participants in the phenomenological approach can help a researcher to create meaningful patterns and relationships between various factors, which would then build knowledge and help to evaluate the interventions (Gee et al., 2013).

This study utilizes qualitative research methods such as open-ended interviews, sampling of the transgender population, systematic data collection, and data analysis and is described in detail below.

Research Design

The specific procedures involved in selecting the sample, collecting the relevant data, and analyzing the data are as follows.

Participants

Participants are selected as a result of their experiences as transgender women or men. The selection of the participants primarily based on their gender identity as being transgender is appropriate for this study because such participants have a wide range of experience and knowledge regarding the struggles and challenges that the transgender community face daily. Because this study aims to evaluate the effectiveness of the recommendations towards the management of the poor nutritional habit problem in the transgender community, it is crucial that the participants have lived as transgender men or women for a minimum of two years. Through these criteria, the participants would be able to compare their nutritional habits before the implementation of the intervention policies and after the implementation of the interventions. The participants will be able to accurately identify the interventions that have positively affected their nutritional habits and will also be able to identify interventions that have had no impact on their lives. A pilot study regarding the views and experiences of the participants on the impact of the new interventions towards their daily lives will be carried out beforehand. Open-ended interviews and questionnaires will primarily be used when conducting the pilot study.

Target Population and Sample

The target population for this study is the transgender men and women aged between 18-50 years from various races and economic backgrounds. This study intends to use a sample size of 20 people. To make the sample selection process easier, the researcher contacted leaders of the transgender community through the various social media platforms to help in accessing the overall transgender population and eventually select the participants. The leaders utilized their positions to send messages on their closed social media groups requesting willing individuals regardless of their economic background, race, gender, or age to volunteer for a study. Once the volunteers have been identified, the researcher will choose a sample of those who meet the criteria and individually send an email to each of the prospective participants to confirm their willingness to participate in the study and to explain the purpose and the implications of the study. The researcher will also explain the procedures of the research, assure the participants of data confidentiality, and also communicate the participants' right to withdraw from the study at any given time. Upon the approval by the prospective participants, the researcher will set the interview time and dates of each of the participants depending on the individual participant schedule and availability. On the actual day of the interview and before the actual interview begins, the researcher will issue the participants with consent forms for their signing. The interviews will then be followed by questionnaires, which the researcher will send via email or personally issue them to the participants.

Data Collection

The primary methods of data collection in this study is through open-ended interviews, field notes, and questionnaires. These methods of data collection were selected for this study because they enable the researcher to acquire knowledge on things that cannot be directly measured or observed, such as feelings. By use of interviews, the participants can give well-detailed descriptions of their experiences, thoughts, and opinions relating to the subject matter. The researcher will either issue written questionnaires to the participants or will send the questionnaires via email. Once the participants have confirmed their receipt of the questionnaires, the researcher will either conduct a face-to-face interview or conduct the interviews by use of mobile phones depending on the availability of the participants. During the interviews, the researcher will collect data by recording phone conversations for phone interviews or handwriting the significant points during the face-to-face interviews.

The pilot study that will be carried beforehand will help in ensuring that the types of questions asked during the interviews and in the questionnaires are sufficient and adequate to give meaningful understanding and interpretations of the impact of the new interventions on the nutritional habits of the transgender community. To make sure that the data collected through the interviews and questionnaires is valid and reliable, the researcher will restructure some of the questions within the questionnaires and during the interviews. If the participants' views on all the restructured questions on both interviews and in the questionnaires remain the same, then it highly likely that the data collected is reliable and valid. To confirm the reliability and validity of the telephone interviews, the researcher will correlate the participants' responses to the interview with the responses of the questionnaires. If there is a correlation between the responses, then it is likely that the data collected is reliable and valid.

Data Analysis

For the researcher to effectively conduct data analysis, the process will be categorized in various sections. In the beginning, the researcher will exhaustively read through all the interview responses and questionnaires and go through all the recordings and field notes from all the participants. After the researcher has comprehensively gone through all the data collected, he/she will extract the key concepts and ideas from each interview response and questionnaires as well as from the field notes and phone recordings and then correlate all the concepts to obtain meaningful and recurrent regularity. The constant comparative method of data analysis will highly be used for the analysis of data in this study. Once the meanings have been extracted, the researcher will then sort and organize them in a structured and chronological way depending on the evolvement of concepts and ideas.

The chronologically sorted and organized concepts are then categorized in various categories. After categorization, the researcher will utilize the color-coding technique, which will help to highlight the specific subject topics to be analyzed. The researcher will then review the coded concepts and issues and identify meaningful relationships within and across the coded data and other data sources. Once the researcher has identified the significant concepts and themes of the categorized and coded data, they will write a well detailed and extensive report with details of the most significant ideas and correlations arising from the experiences of the transgender persons who were involved in the study.

To evaluate the credibility and validity of the analysis, the researcher will contact the participants and inform them that he/she was going to send a final report to them via email for their review. After informing the participants, the researcher will send the final report to them and request them to evaluate whether the report matches their views and experiences regarding the newly implemented interventions relating to poor nutritional habits among the transgender community. If the participants determine that the report captures their experiences, then it is likely that the analysis is valid.

Reflection Process

My research process was that of a trial and error, and I struggled to identify ways in which I could access the transgender persons for interviews and questionnaires. In the beginning, I thought it would be possible for me to contact the transgender persons directly by joining their closed groups in social media. I soon realized that they might not be receptive to the idea of undertaking a study, and therefore I decided to contact their leaders, who would then deliver my message to the members. I was, however, unsure whether the volunteers would capture all the aspects of the study, i.e., being between 18-50 years, be from different races, and economic backgrounds would be covered in totali...