This study is a community-led project to investigate alcohol use among UK transgender and non-binary communities. The study team set out to measure drinking behaviours, drinking motives, how these relate to experiences of discrimination and alcohol-related harms, and sexualised alcohol use.
Community engagement throughout the research cycle
The research has been informed by a paid community advisory group of four trans and non-binary people, diverse in sex, gender, sexual orientation, ethnicity, (dis)ability and neurodiversity. The community advisory group provided input to grant applications, survey design and protocol development, ensuring that the study was truly trans and non-binary-led from the beginning.
The second stage involved collaboration with the community advisory group to partner with national, regional and local trans and non-binary-led support, advocacy, and community-building organisations. These partnerships were predominantly centred around recruitment efforts in the hope that these highly influential partners could maximise sample size and diversity to ensure results were sufficiently robust to do justice to the participants’ time.
Thirdly, as part of a plan to increase the accessibility of the findings and further diversify the team, a trans artist was recruited to lead the design of a piece that will convey the findings of the project. This will be distributed by partners on social media, integrated into all lay output and disseminated at an online event where community attendance will be prioritised. The artist will be paid for this work, retain the intellectual property, and aim to reproduce the content to raise money for community charities and future research.
Inspired by the “Nothing About Us Without Us” movement, the team is taking every opportunity to ensure that this work is informed by trans and non-binary colleagues.
#MentalHealthResearchMatters
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