Construction and Validation of the Gender Dysphoria Scale for Adult Students in Pakistan

The primary objective of the study was to develop an indigenous Gender Dysphoria Scale in the Urdu language to measure gender dysphoria among the students in educational institutes and clinical settings in Punjab, Pakistan. Semi-structured interviews with students suffering from gender dysphoria were used to generate 52 items. After conducting the expert evaluation, 48 items were administered to 30 students for pilot testing. A sample of 250 participants was recruited for Exploratory Factor Analysis, and its value was fixed to 6 6-factor structure, which corresponded to 48 items and had a KMO value of .95. For Confirmatory Factor Analysis, 250 participants were selected for a field study using the purposive sampling technique. The value of CFA produced 32 items, with a CFI value of .95 (Chi-square = 806.11, RMSEA = .05, CMIN/DF= 1.79, TLI= .94, and GFI= .71). The test-retest reliability was .83, convergent at .85, and divergent validity at .00 were all established in appropriate ranges. The findings of the study have importance in clinical and counselling settings to measure the gender dysphoria through an indigenous, reliable, and valid tool. Hence, it can be helpful in developing interventions for students with gender dysphoria.