Goldbach Jeremy T, Schrager Sheree M, Mamey Mary R
Suzanne Dworak-Peck School of Social Work, University of Southern California, Los Angeles, CA, United States.
Division of Hospital Medicine, Children's Hospital Los Angeles, Los Angeles, CA, United States.
Front Psychol. 2017 Nov 28;8:2057. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2017.02057. eCollection 2017.
Sexual minority adolescents (SMA) consistently report health disparities compared to their heterosexual counterparts, yet the underlying mechanisms of these negative health outcomes remain unclear. The predominant explanatory model is the minority stress theory; however, this model was developed largely with adults, and no valid and comprehensive measure of minority stress has been developed for adolescents. The present study validated a newly developed instrument to measure minority stress among racially and ethnically diverse SMA. A sample of 346 SMA aged 14-17 was recruited and surveyed between February 2015 and July 2016. The focal measure of interest was the 64-item, 11-factor Sexual Minority Adolescent Stress Inventory (SMASI) developed in the initial phase of this study. Criterion validation measures included measures of depressive symptoms, suicidality and self-harm, youth problem behaviors, and substance use; the general Adolescent Stress Questionnaire (ASQ) was included as a measure of divergent validity. Analyses included Pearson and tetrachoric correlations to establish criterion and divergent validity and structural equation modeling to assess the explanatory utility of the SMASI relative to the ASQ. SMASI scores were significantly associated with all outcomes but only moderately associated with the ASQ ( = -0.13 to 0.51). Analyses revealed significant associations of a latent minority stress variable with both proximal and distal health outcomes beyond the variation explained by general stress. Results show that the SMASI is the first instrument to validly measure minority stress among SMA.
与异性恋青少年相比，性少数群体青少年（SMA）一直报告存在健康差异，然而这些负面健康结果的潜在机制仍不清楚。主要的解释模型是少数群体压力理论；然而，该模型主要是针对成年人开发的，尚未开发出针对青少年的有效且全面的少数群体压力测量方法。本研究验证了一种新开发的工具，用于测量不同种族和族裔的性少数群体青少年的少数群体压力。在2015年2月至2016年7月期间，招募并调查了346名14 - 17岁的性少数群体青少年样本。感兴趣的重点测量工具是在本研究初始阶段开发的64项、11因素的性少数群体青少年压力量表（SMASI）。标准验证测量包括抑郁症状、自杀倾向和自我伤害、青少年问题行为以及物质使用的测量；一般青少年压力问卷（ASQ）被纳入作为区分效度的测量工具。分析包括Pearson和四分相关以建立标准效度和区分效度，以及结构方程模型以评估SMASI相对于ASQ的解释效用。SMASI得分与所有结果均显著相关，但与ASQ仅呈中度相关（=-0.13至0.51）。分析揭示了一个潜在的少数群体压力变量与近端和远端健康结果之间存在显著关联，超出了一般压力所解释的变异。结果表明，SMASI是首个有效测量性少数群体青少年少数群体压力的工具。
