Centre for Addiction and Mental Health, Toronto, Ontario, Canada.
University of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, USA.
J Interpers Violence. 2020 Jun;35(11-12):2236-2253. doi: 10.1177/0886260517701450. Epub 2017 Apr 5.
Sexual minority girls (SMGs), compared with heterosexual females, are more likely to report negative sexual outcomes including earlier age of sexual intercourse debut, more lifetime and recent sexual partners, pregnancy involvement, and sex while intoxicated. Data describing the mechanisms related to these health disparities are limited. The purpose of this study was therefore to longitudinally assess the roles of sexual minority-related peer victimization and heavy episodic drinking (HED) as mediators of the relation between sexual minority status and sexual outcomes. The girls examined in this study were recruited into a longitudinal study of adolescent health from two large, urban adolescent medicine clinics affiliated with academic medical centers. The final sample for this analysis included 79 SMGs and a comparison group of 127 heterosexual girls aged between 14 and 19 years. Mediation models were run in the structural equation modeling framework. Our results provided evidence to support a serial multiple mediation pathway. SMGs were more likely to report sexual minority-related victimization, and sexual minority-related victimization predicted increased HED, which was subsequently found to prospectively predict increased sexual risk behaviors. Taken together, these novel findings indicate that both sexual minority-related victimization and HED may play important roles in explaining disparities in risky sexual behavior among SMGs.
性少数群体女孩（SMGs）与异性恋女性相比，更有可能报告负面的性结果，包括更早的性开始年龄、更多的终身和近期性伴侣、怀孕和醉酒时发生性行为。描述与这些健康差异相关的机制的数据有限。因此，本研究的目的是纵向评估与性少数群体相关的同伴受害和重度间歇性饮酒（HED）作为性少数群体地位与性结果之间关系的中介作用。本研究中检查的女孩是从两个大型城市青少年医学诊所招募到一个青少年健康的纵向研究中的，这些诊所与学术医疗中心有关。本分析的最终样本包括 79 名性少数群体女孩和 127 名年龄在 14 岁至 19 岁之间的异性恋女孩。在结构方程模型框架中运行了中介模型。我们的结果提供了证据支持串联多重中介途径。性少数群体女孩更有可能报告与性少数群体相关的受害，与性少数群体相关的受害预测 HED 增加，随后发现 HED 会预测增加性行为风险。综上所述，这些新发现表明，与性少数群体相关的受害和 HED 可能在解释性少数群体中性行为风险差异方面发挥重要作用。
