This Does Not Compute…

Last week the results of survey was released and I don’t think the number add up. Speaking from the Margins was released by Transgender Equality Network Ireland (TENI) and their press release said,

The report reveals shocking levels of suicide attempt rates amongst the trans community in Ireland. 78% of respondents had considered suicide, and 40% of these had attempted to take their own live at least once. The levels of self-harm reported were also disturbing, with 44% of people having self-harmed.

The press release said that they 210 people were interviewed in the summer of 2012, however, there was no other information given about the survey. In 2011 a survey of 6,450 trans-people, Injustice at Every Turn was released and they found that 41% have attempted suicide which seems to correlate to the TENI study. But I do not know how the 78% who had thought about suicide came about, that is almost 8 out of 10 trans-people which seems like an awful high number. I would like to see the questions that they asked.

A Canadian survey found that,

Using survey data from the Trans PULSE Project (n=433), we estimated that suicidal thoughts were experienced by 36% of trans Ontarians over the past year, and that 10% attempted suicide during that time.

The 78% in the Irish study might due to the way the questions were asked or it might be due to the Irish culture. Being a strongly religious country might account for the high numbers, but we have no way of knowing without seeing the mechanics of the survey such as how was the sample created, the order of the questions asked and the wording of the questions.

The NCTE/NGLTF survey was,

…through direct contacts with more than 800 transgender-led or transgender-serving community-based organizations in the U.S. We also contacted possible participants through 150 active online community listserves. The vast majority of respondents took the survey online, through a URL established at Pennsylvania State University.

While the Trans-Pulse survey was a RDS (Response Driven Sample) survey, where the first persons (the seeds) to take the survey was asked to recruit three other trans-people (1^st generation) to take the survey and they in turn were asked to recruit three more people each (2^nd generation). That process is repeated until the desired number of respondents is achieved.

Unfortunately, we do not know anything about the Irish survey to draw a conclusion about he data.