Arch Suicide Res. 2024 Jul-Sep;28(3):791-799. doi: 10.1080/13811118.2023.2227233. Epub 2023 Jun 22.
The sexual orientation of youth who die by suicide in the United States is usually unknown. This study assessed how observed patterns of unknown sexual orientation are likely to affect research findings.
We analyzed the National Violent Death Reporting System (NVDRS) Restricted Access Dataset to assess whether sexual orientation among youth suicide decedents is disproportionately known for different demographics. We then assessed the degree to which estimated sexual minority rates would be affected if researchers were to assume either (a) that sexual orientation data is missing completely at random, or (b) that orientation information is missing at random after accounting for observed demographic patterns.
<10% of the sample had known sexual orientation. Sexual orientation was more frequently known for females, white people, and older people, and missingness varied by geography. The choice between modeling the data as missing completely at random versus at random conditional upon demographics had a > 2-fold impact on estimated sexual minority rates among youth suicide decedents.
Research on sexual orientation and youth suicide is strongly impacted by how researchers account (or do not account) for missingness.
在美国，自杀身亡的年轻人的性取向通常是未知的。本研究评估了未知性取向的观察模式如何可能影响研究结果。
我们分析了国家暴力死亡报告系统（NVDRS）受限访问数据集，以评估年轻人自杀死者的性取向在不同人口统计学特征中是否不成比例地被了解。然后，我们评估了如果研究人员假设（a）性取向数据完全随机缺失，或者（b）在考虑到观察到的人口统计学模式后随机缺失定向信息，估计的少数性取向率将受到多大影响。
<10%的样本具有已知的性取向。女性、白人和老年人的性取向更频繁地被了解，而且缺失情况因地理位置而异。在将数据建模为完全随机缺失与根据人口统计学随机缺失之间的选择对青年自杀死者中估计的少数性取向率有>2 倍的影响。
对性取向和青年自杀的研究受到研究人员如何解释（或不解释）缺失的强烈影响。
