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Evidence of Diverse Identities in a Large National Sample of Sexual and Gender Minority Adolescents
Author(s) -
Watson Ryan J.,
Wheldon Christopher W.,
Puhl Rebecca M.
Publication year - 2020
Publication title -
journal of research on adolescence
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.342
H-Index - 95
eISSN - 1532-7795
pISSN - 1050-8392
DOI - 10.1111/jora.12488
Subject(s) - psychology , identity (music) , diversity (politics) , sexual minority , sample (material) , sexual identity , developmental psychology , gender identity , sexual orientation , social psychology , human sexuality , gender studies , sociology , chemistry , physics , chromatography , anthropology , acoustics
Adolescence is a time of identity exploration, and preliminary evidence indicates the ways adolescents are describing their sexual and gender identities ( SOGI ) are changing. A nuanced understanding of SOGI is necessary for valid assessment in developmental research. Current measures do not capture the diversity of emerging identities among young people. Our study analyzed a national sample of 17,112 sexual and gender minority adolescents (13–17 years) to better understand how identity labels are reported across sexual, gender, and ethnoracial minorities. Adolescents reported 26 distinct SOGI categories; 24% of adolescents utilized nontraditional SOGI labels, such as pansexual and nonbinary. These identifications varied significantly as a function of ethnoracial identity. Results have implications for how scholars conceptualize and measure SOGI among adolescents.