A Look Into RE-IMAGYN BC: Bettering How We Measure Gender and Relationship Fairness

Authors: Yas Botelho (they/them) Youth Analysis Affiliate, School of Well being Sciences Simon Fraser College and Harman Grewal (she/her), Analysis Assistant, School of Well being Sciences Simon Fraser College | Editors: Romina Garcia de leon, Janielle Richards  (Weblog Coordinators) | Professional Reviewer: Lindsey Thurston 

Printed: August sixteenth, 2024

Our intimate relationships are significant social determinants of well being. Lack of gender fairness in relationships can result in intimate companion violence, publicity to sexually transmitted infections, and undesirable pregnancies. Due to these potential well being outcomes, it’s necessary to: a) measure relationship fairness successfully and b) be sure that our measurements embody various relationship constructions and populations. Nevertheless, the scales at the moment used to measure gender-based energy dynamics inside intimate relationships have been designed solely with cisgender, heterosexual, white, and monogamous married ladies in thoughts.

The failure of those measurements to signify the wants of youth turned evident in Dr. Kalysha Closson’s work evaluating the effectiveness of the Sexual Relationship and Energy Scale (SRPS) with younger individuals in South Africa. The SRPS measures controlling behaviour and decision-making dominance of male companions in intimate relationships. Within the examine, it was revealed that individuals had challenges with comprehension of the SRPS questions leading to a number of interpretations of questions and total, a scarcity of applicability to younger individuals’s lives. These findings reveal a necessity for a extra inclusive and up to date measurement of gender and relationship fairness.  

Intimate companion violence happens in all settings and socio-economic backgrounds, but analysis has proven that sure teams of persons are at larger danger of intimate companion violence together with: younger ladies, younger disabled ladies, Indigenous ladies, non-binary youth, and lesbian, homosexual, and bisexual individuals. Due to this fact, there’s a nice want for extra correct measurements of relationship fairness to finest help programming for these in danger.   

That’s the place our examine is available in: the Relationship Equity and Intersectional Measurement Among Gender-inclusive YouNg individuals in British Columbia (RE-IMAGYN BC) is seeking to create a extra inclusive and complete gender and relationship fairness measurement scale via a youth-led and community-based strategy that’s “knowledgeable by the lived and residing experiences of queer and trans youth”. 

In follow, this implies placing collectively a workforce of youth who belong to the examine inhabitants of curiosity (queer, trans, gender various, and non-monogamous youth between the ages of 16 and 29 years in BC) to co-lead each facet of the examine as Youth Analysis Associates (YRAs) or via our Youth Advisory Committee (YAC). 

The YRAs are embedded in RE-IMAGYN’s day-to-day analysis actions as they examine in with each other, in addition to the opposite examine members on a bi-weekly foundation. Moreover, they help the facilitation of the YAC, acquire information, and help with information evaluation and information mobilization actions. They’re compensated $50 for each cognitive interview they full and $25/hour for all different study-related actions. 

Compared to the YRAs, the YAC performs an overarching advisory function. They take part in discussions about examine strategies, information evaluation, and information mobilization in 2-hour conferences that happen each 4 to six weeks. When new youths be a part of the YAC, they’re compensated $50 for reviewing varied onboarding supplies after which $50 for each assembly they attend and full the related pre-work for.  

Central to our youth-engaged strategy is permitting the youth to point out up on this work in the easiest way that works for them. Some examples of this are: providing tailor-made analysis coaching in order that the youth really feel empowered to steer the examine, and utilizing strategies of communication which are extra accessible to the youth, resembling Discord and textual content versus e-mail.  

The success of RE-IMAGYN is contingent upon the relationships we now have with these youths, in addition to our group collaborators. We encourage the youth to carry their entire selves, which means their identities, experiences, tales, and worldviews, to every little thing that we do. The objective is to collectively floor our work in relationality to disrupt energy imbalances that exist between researchers and group, making room for shared decision-making that makes for extra equitable and, in flip, higher analysis.  

To remain up-to-date with our examine, please observe us on Instagram @reimagyn.