The ethical limits of psychological testing
It is common practice in Canada, and many other countries, to have candidates for sex reassignment surgery undergo psychological testing in order to prove they are fit for the surgery. Is this an ethical use of psychological tests?
Ethics in psychological testing is the practice of ensuring that tests serve to benefit both individuals taking the tests and society at large. While also making sure that the information being gained from any particular test is worth any harm or risk taking the test may cause.
There are also ethical concerns in how tests are administered — specifically that the test administrator gives the test in a non-biased and scientifically informed manner.
I believe, possibly naively, that administrators of psychological tests for sex reassignment surgery are well trained and informed about how to administer tests. However I find it hard to trust that administrators are unbiased in their decisions. Transsexualism is a rather new concept to society and one that is highly debated. Just like any other person administrators have their own opinions and biases when it comes to transsexualism; whether or not they believe it to be a real thing and whether or not they believe surgery is appropriate for such a condition. I hope those that are doing psychological testing for sex reassignment surgery believe that transsexualism is real and they want to help the people they are testing.
In the administration of psychological tests there are also concerns of confidentiality, informed consent, and voluntarism. Presumably voluntarisms is not an ethical concern because people undergoing psychological testing of this manner are actively choosing to undergo sex reassignment surgery and are willing to undergo anything it takes to get the surgery. Informed consent likely isn’t an issue either because participants are aware of the type of testing they are undergoing before beginning the testing.
Where I see the biggest ethical problem of psychological testing for sex reassignment surgery is the construct itself. I don’t feel that it is ethical to be making such a life changing decision based on psychological tests. I don’t think any psychological test can properly explain and quantify such a complicated thing as transsexualism, let alone decide who is transsexual and who is not. Transsexualism being such a “new” thing is not well understood which makes it hard to quantify into a test. As well there is no tangible, scientific, biological entity that has been discovered that helps to explain transsexualism. The fact that there is no concrete entity or explanation for transsexualism makes it even harder to quantify the construct into a psychological test. Thus the practice of psychological testing to determine if someone is transsexual is unethical.
Another reason why I find this practice to be unethical is because people who are transsexual likely struggle to explain their experience. Many won’t fully understand their experience until after they have undergone surgery, until after they experience what it’s like to be in the “right” body. This makes it hard for a test administrator to try and understand and to try and quantify another individuals experience into a test measurement. It is unethical to have a third party try to measure and quantify an experience and feeling that is so subjective and personal.
All of this being said I struggle to find a better way to decide the eligibility of candidates for sex reassignment surgery. As well, not being a transsexual myself, my opinion is nothing more than another biased third party opinion.
