Dr. Allen Mallory, Human Sciences,
Dr. Rin Reczek, Sociology
Summary
Nearly 20% of adults in Generation Z identify as lesbian, gay, bisexual, or queer in some other way compared to about 11% of Millennials (Jones, 2022). Data from adolescents in school also suggests that adolescents in Generation Z identified as a sexual minority adolescent (SMA) increased from 7.3% in 2009 to 14.3% in 2017 (Raifman et al., 2020). Among these studies often the greatest proportion of SMA identify as bisexual and/or female. What has received less attention is the racial diversity among this young generation of SSMA. Mental health and substance use outcomes vary at the intersections of race, ethnicity, and sexual orientation (Bostwick et al., 2014), so as scholars and practitioners develop intervention and prevention strategies for SMA, lack of attention to the racial and ethnic diversity among the population will undermine the effectiveness of these strategies (Keefe et al., 2023). The proposed project aims to document the trends in identification as a SMA and related health disparities by race and ethnicity, and within race, the intersections of sex, sexual identity, and age. These analyses establish the diversity in the increasing prevalence of identification as a SMA will be further investigated with an R21 to acquire the state level data to examine the same trends and link them to structural factors. The project will leverage the Center for Disease Control and Prevention’s (CDC) Youth Risk Behavior Survey (YRBS) which collects demographic and risk behavior data from adolescents in grades 9 -12 (i.e., roughly ages 12-18 years old). The repeated cross-sectional survey is collected every odd year, and since 2015, the national data includes questions about sexual identity and sex of sexual contacts. Using these data, the proposed project has three aims: 1.) Conduct a trend analysis of the prevalence of identification as a sexual minority by race and sex assigned at birth between 2015-2021. 2.) Document the trend in health disparities in mental health and substance use at the intersections of race and ethnicity, sex, sexual identity, and age 3.) Submit a R21 to assess state-level variation in the prevalence of SM and gender minority identification and health disparities at the intersection of race and ethnicity and sex assigned at birth. The national YRBS data only includes core questions that are asked from every participating site. However, in the state YRBS, states can ask questions unique to their state, and several states ask question that allow for identifying trans youth. Collecting and analyzing the state-level data would allow me to examine state-level structural factors (i.e., changes in state policy, state youth poverty, and social attitudes) and look at the trends of interest among trans youth. The results from this study would start a surprisingly absent conversation about the racial diversity of new generations of SM youth and their health. The R21 would further allow me to extend these trends to trans youth as well as structural factors related to health disparities for trans youth.