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A one-factor, 14-item parent-report Gender Identity Questionnaire for Children (GIQC) was developed in a sample of 325 clinic-referred children with gender identity problems and 504 controls from Toronto, Canada (Johnson et al., 2004). In this study, we report a cross-national, cross-clinic comparative analysis of the GIQC on gender-referred children (N = 338) from Toronto and gender-referred children (N = 175) from Utrecht, The Netherlands. Across clinics, the results showed both similarities and differences. Gender-referred boys from Utrecht had a significantly higher total score (indicating more cross-gender behavior) than did gender-referred boys from Toronto, but there was no significant difference for girls. In the Toronto sample, the gender-referred girls had a significantly higher total score than the gender-referred boys, but there was no significant sex difference in the Utrecht sample. Across both clinics, gender-referred children who met the complete DSM criteria for gender identity disorder (GID) had a significantly higher cross-gender score than the gender-referred children who were subthreshold for GID (Cohen's d = 1.11). The results of this study provide the first empirical evidence of relative similarity in cross-gender behavior in a sample of gender-referred children from western Europe when compared to North American children. The results also provide some support for cross-clinic consistency in clinician-based diagnosis of GID. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

P. Hegarty (2009) offered several critiques of the articles by G. Rieger, J. A. W. Linsenmeier, L. Gygax, and J. M. Bailey (2008) and K. D. Drummond, S. J. Bradley, M. Peterson-Badali, and K. J. Zucker (2008) that were published in a Developmental Psychology special section entitled "Sexual Orientation Across the Lifespan," guest-edited by C. J. Patterson and R. C. Savin-Williams (2008): (a) reliance on a "disease paradigm" (i.e., the use of "medicalizing" language) of lesbian-gay-bisexual-transgender issues at the expense of a "stigma paradigm," (b) endorsement of a developmental linkage between childhood sex-typed behavior and later gender identity-sexual orientation, and (c) various sociophilosophical and applied matters pertaining to the diagnosis of gender identity disorder in children. In this reply, we address these 3 criticisms and argue that an interdisciplinary approach, informed by multiple paradigms, will most certainly facilitate, not impede, the discovery of answers to many questions about psychosexual development for which data are currently lacking. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]