Meanley Steven, Brennan-Ing Mark, Cook Judith A, Brown Andre L, Haberlen Sabina A, Palella Frank J, Shoptaw Steven J, Ware Deanna, Egan James E, Friedman Mackey R, Plankey Michael W
Department of Family and Community Health, University of Pennsylvania School of Nursing.
Brookdale Center for Healthy Aging at Hunter College, City University of New York.
Psychol Sex Orientat Gend Divers. 2024 Jun;11(2):316-327. doi: 10.1037/sgd0000600. Epub 2022 Sep 15.
Interpersonal management of homophobic stigma (e.g., selectively constructing one's social network; confronting stigma) is an understudied area of resilience among sexual minority people. Among a sample of cisgender sexual minority men (SMM; = 798) in midlife and older adulthood, we assessed the psychometric properties and characterized the sociodemographic differences of our newly developed, theory-informed homophobia management scale. Data come from the Healthy Aging substudy of the Multicenter AIDS Cohort Study, which is a prospective longitudinal study implemented to evaluate the natural trajectories of HIV risk and treatment among sexual minority men. Guided by the proactive coping processes model, the Healthy Aging team proposed eight items to measure homophobia management, which were included at four waves of survey data collection completed at semiannual study visits. Using factor analyses and linear regressions, we assessed our scale's construct validity, convergent validity, and internal consistency, and characterized scores by age, race/ethnicity, sexual orientation, and HIV status. Factor analyses yielded a six-item scale with adequate construct validity and acceptable internal consistency (Cronbach's alpha = .69). Our final scale exhibited convergent validity given its statistically significant inverse association with internalized homophobia and positive association with psychological connections to the gay community. Bivariate differences in homophobia management emerged by age, race/ethnicity, and sexual orientation but were not statistically significant in multivariable analyses. Our study provides a validated, unidimensional scale to assess homophobia management among SMM in midlife and older adulthood. We provide recommendations to improve the implementation of our scale in future surveillance.
对恐同污名的人际管理(例如,有选择地构建自己的社交网络;直面污名)是性少数群体中一个研究不足的复原力领域。在一个中年及老年顺性别性少数男性(SMM;n = 798)样本中,我们评估了新开发的、基于理论的恐同管理量表的心理测量特性,并描述了其社会人口学差异。数据来自多中心艾滋病队列研究的健康老龄化子研究,这是一项前瞻性纵向研究,旨在评估性少数男性中艾滋病毒风险和治疗的自然轨迹。在积极应对过程模型的指导下,健康老龄化团队提出了八个项目来测量恐同管理,这些项目包含在每半年一次的研究访问中完成的四轮调查数据收集里。通过因子分析和线性回归,我们评估了量表的结构效度、收敛效度和内部一致性,并按年龄、种族/族裔、性取向和艾滋病毒感染状况对得分进行了描述。因子分析得出了一个六项量表,具有足够的结构效度和可接受的内部一致性(克朗巴哈系数 = 0.69)。我们的最终量表显示出收敛效度,因为它与内化恐同呈统计学显著负相关,与与同性恋社区的心理联系呈正相关。恐同管理在年龄、种族/族裔和性取向上存在双变量差异,但在多变量分析中无统计学显著性。我们的研究提供了一个经过验证的单维度量表,用于评估中年及老年SMM中的恐同管理。我们提供了建议,以改进我们的量表在未来监测中的应用。