Gender and Sexuality Alliance Members’ Emergent Identities Over Time and Associations With Hope

• In Event: Gender and Sexuality in Context: Families, Communities, and Media

Abstract

A growing minority of youth identify with emergent sexual orientations (e.g., pansexual, queer, asexual, etc.) and gender identities (e.g., nonbinary, genderqueer, gender fluid, agender, etc.; Watson et al., 2020). However, youth who identify with emergent sexual orientation identities, as transgender, or with emergent gender identities are more likely to report anxiety and depression than youth with other SGM identities (Poteat et al., 2021; Trevor Project, 2021).

GSAs serve as important spaces for SGM students (Griffin, Lee, Waugh, & Beyer, 2004), many who identify with emergent sexual orientation and gender identities. Previous research suggests that membership in a GSA can engender greater levels of hope (Poteat et al., 2020). What remains understudied is whether GSA members vary in their level of hope based on their specific SGM identities.

We hypothesized that youth who identified as transgender or with emergent SGM identities would experience lower levels of hope than GSA members of other sexual orientations and gender identities.

Participants
We used data from nine Massachusetts GSAs that participated in two studies. For the current study, Cohort 1 (n = 161) participated in 2016 or 2017 and Cohort 2 (n = 153) in 2021. Cohorts did not overlap.

Measures

Hope. Youth reported hope (6-items; α=.92/.88) with an established measure.

Sexual Orientation. Youth were asked to check all that applied: gay/lesbian, bisexual, questioning, heterosexual, pansexual, asexual, queer, and were also give the option to write in other identities. Youth who endorsed pansexual, asexual, queer, or wrote in another identity were coded as identifying with emergent identities.

Gender Identity. Youth were asked to check all that applied: male, female, questioning, transgender, nonbinary, genderqueer, genderfluid, agender, and were also give the option to write in other identities. Youth who endorsed nonbinary, genderqueer, genderfluid, agender, or wrote in another identity were coded as identifying with emergent identities.

Other covariates. Youth reported their race/ethnicity, age, length of GSA membership, and the frequency with which they experienced three types of victimization in the past 30 days on a four-point scale.

Analytic Plan

We conducted multilevel logistic and linear regressions in Stata with random effects for schools.

Results
Youth were 1.97 times more likely to identify with emergent sexual orientations in 2021 vs. 2016/2017 (p = 0.024), after adjusting for all other covariates. Youth were 5.23 times more likely to identify with emergent gender identities in 2021 vs. 2016/2017 (p = 0.000), after adjusting for all other covariates.

Results suggest that youth who identified with emergent sexual orientation identities (b = -0.49, B= p = 0.016), as transgender (b = -0.68, p = 0.019), and with emergent gender identities (b = -0.54, p = 0.026) reported lower hope, after adjusting for all other covariates. All standardized coefficients, a measure of effect size used in multilevel models, for the predictors of interest are small (all βs = -0.14; Snijders and Bosker, 2012).

Discussion
Future research and GSA programming should attend to the diverse identities among GSA members when assessing impact and when designing activities to promote hope, respectively.

Authors

• Sarah Rosenbach, New York University
  Presenting Author

• Paul Poteat, Boston College

• Hirokazu Yoshikawa, New York University

• Jerel P Calzo, San Diego State University

• Arthur Lipkin

• Steven Henry Sherwood, University of Texas at Austin

• Abigail Grace Richburg, University of Michigan - Ann Arbor