The Effect of Inner Dialogue and Awareness on Tolerance towards Transgender Youth: A Pretest-Posttest comparative study
Summary
In recent years, a lot of awareness has been raised about challenging stigma and intolerance which individuals from the transgender community face. Even though regulations and laws are evolving through more recognition and tolerance, prejudices and discrimination are still present. Especially transgender youth are experiencing various forms of bullying such as exclusion, swearing and even physical violence. Due to these stressors, many transgender youths develop mental health problem, such as depression, anxiety, substance abuse and suicide. The goal of this research was to investigate whether engaging in an inner dialogue can facilitate and increase tolerance. We further hypothesized, that more awareness can enhance tolerance towards people of the transgender community. This online study employed a three-group pre-test and post-test design, with participants placed in either an inner dialogue group, an awareness group, or a comparison group. Participants (n =156) were youth between the age 16 and 25. The transgender knowledge, attitudes, and beliefs scale (T-KAB) was used to measure the level of tolerance before and after each condition. A repeated measures analysis of variance (ANOVA) was used to examine differences between the three conditions. Results indicated a significant difference between groups. Additionally, a post-hoc analysis showed, that awareness was a significant predictor for tolerance increase compared to the control group. Inner dialogue was found to increase tolerance, but the effect was not significant. However, our findings indicated a lack of difference between the inner dialogue condition and the awareness condition. Further research is needed to investigate the effect of inner dialogue on tolerance.