School Psychological Practices within Personality Assessment of Non-Binary Youth

Author

Christian FaryFollow

Creative Commons License

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 4.0 License.

Date of Graduation

8-9-2024

Document Type

Thesis

Degree Name

Educational Specialist (EdS)

Department

Department of Graduate Psychology

Advisor(s)

Deborah Kipps-Vaughan

Tammy Gilligan

Ginger Griffin

Abstract

The following analysis provides the school psychology community with a discussion pertaining to the assessment of personality, particularly with Gender Non-Conforming and Non-Binary students. This student population faces greater mental health concerns and faces a higher amount of discrimination. Emerging research has shown that this population faces a higher risk for developing both mood disorders and harmful behaviors to themselves. The use of personality assessments provides practitioners with a vast look into many facets of mood, personality, and behavior. These measures can look deeper into behavior, especially internalizing behaviors, which can be useful for students with depression and other mood concerns. This analysis sought to gauge the current practices of school psychologists, given their decisions in three scenarios that involve the evaluation of Gender Non-Conforming and Non-Binary students using personality measures. The researcher hopes that this survey will invite practitioners to consider their current practices with personality measures, and their current experiences working with gender-diverse youth.

Results broadly indicated that there was more support for altering traditional projective measures to assess non-binary students, whereas using objective measures with this population seemed to cause differing responses among participants. Results also indicated that school psychologists make decisions regarding the assessment of GNC students either on the basis of the student’s preferred gender identity, or on the basis of the student’s biological assignment at birth.

September 2023 - This research also acknowledges the recent changes in legislation in the commonwealth of Virginia with regards to transgender policies in public schools. At the time of this proposal and survey, this legislation does not seem to have any direct effect on this survey. Nonetheless, the researcher and committee for this thesis will continue to monitor changes in policy pertaining to transgender students as the year progresses, and will continue to discuss these implications.

Recommended Citation

Fary, Christian, "School Psychological Practices within Personality Assessment of Non-Binary Youth" (2024). Educational Specialist, 2020-current. 84.
https://commons.lib.jmu.edu/edspec202029/84