Liu Qimin, Rodriguez Violeta J, Nestor Bridget A, Trichtinger Lauren A, Chandler Cristian, Friedman M Reuel
Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences, Boston University, Boston, MA, 02215, USA.
Department of Psychology, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, Champaign, IL, USA.
Arch Sex Behav. 2025 Sep 12. doi: 10.1007/s10508-025-03220-4.
Minority stress theory posits that discrimination contributes to increased distress among individuals with minoritized identities, including individuals who identify as lesbian, gay, and bisexual. Theory-driven studies have increasingly shown that intersectionality is critical to inform research on distress and discrimination among sexual minorities. Extant literature, however, has often examined discrimination and distress as homogeneous constructs. Overlooking nuances in specific forms of discrimination and distress may mask the potential effects of intersectionality in investigating sociodemographic factors that intersect with minoritization in sexual minority populations. Additionally, empirically deriving intersections among a broad set of sociodemographic factors in terms of their influences on discrimination and distress can offer new insights for population subgroups. The current study identified sociodemographic correlates (e.g., age cohort, race, gender identity, sexual identity, education, urbanicity, and poverty) related to patterns of specific distress and discrimination. These patterns are each related to subgroups within sexual minorities defined by intersections of these sociodemographic correlates. We applied a novel data mining method-the multivariate conditional inference tree-to a nationally representative sample of US adults of sexual minorities (N = 1518) from 2016 to 2018. We identified three groups-adults, adults in poverty, and bisexual and other sexual minority adults-that showed elevated patterns of minority stress. Theoretically, we found minority stress among sexual minority adults in the USA to be heterogeneous. Methodologically, we demonstrated that conditional inference tree modeling is an important tool to better position intersectionality studies moving forward to inform policy and intervention development.
少数群体压力理论认为，歧视会导致具有少数群体身份的个体，包括认同自己为女同性恋、男同性恋和双性恋的个体，痛苦加剧。理论驱动的研究越来越多地表明，交叉性对于为性少数群体中痛苦和歧视的研究提供信息至关重要。然而，现有文献常常将歧视和痛苦视为同质结构。忽视特定形式的歧视和痛苦中的细微差别，可能会掩盖交叉性在调查与性少数群体中的少数群体化相互交叉的社会人口因素时的潜在影响。此外，从实证角度推导一系列广泛的社会人口因素之间的交叉点对歧视和痛苦的影响，可以为人口亚群体提供新的见解。本研究确定了与特定痛苦和歧视模式相关的社会人口学相关因素（如年龄组、种族、性别认同、性取向认同、教育程度、城市化程度和贫困状况）。这些模式分别与由这些社会人口学相关因素的交叉点所定义的性少数群体中的亚群体相关。我们将一种新颖的数据挖掘方法——多元条件推断树——应用于2016年至2018年美国成年性少数群体的全国代表性样本（N = 1518）。我们确定了三组——成年人、贫困成年人以及双性恋和其他性少数成年人群体——这些群体表现出较高的少数群体压力模式。从理论上讲，我们发现美国性少数成年人群体中的少数群体压力是异质的。从方法学上讲，可以证明条件推断树建模是一个重要工具，有助于更好地推动交叉性研究，为政策和干预措施的制定提供信息。
