Content area
Full Text
The goal of this study was to evaluate a novel measure of environmental risk factors for bullying among sexual minority youths. Data on lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) assault hate crimes were obtained from police records, geocoded, and then linked to individual-level data on bullying and sexual orientation from the 2008 Boston Youth Survey Geospatial Dataset (N = 1,292; 108 sexual minorities). Results indicated that sexual minority youths who reported relational and electronic bullying were more likely to reside in neighborhoods with higher LGBT assault hate crime rates. There was no association between LGBT assault hate crimes and bullying among heterosexual youths, providing evidence for specificity to sexual minority youth. Moreover, no relationships were observed between sexual minority bullying and neighborhood-level violent and property crimes, indicating that the results were specific to LGBT assault hate crimes.
Keywords: bullying; sexual orientation; hate crimes; community-level determinants of youth violence
Lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT, or sexual minority) youth are disproportionately targets of bullying and peer victimization (Almeida, Johnson, Corliss, Molnar, & Azrael, 2009; Berlan, Corliss, Field, Goodman, & Austin, 2010; Espelage, Aragon, Birkett, & Koening, 2008; Friedman et al., 2011). Compared to their heterosexual peers, sexual minority youths are more likely to be threatened or injured at school (Garofalo, Wolf, Kessel, Palfrey, & DuRant, 1998), to skip school as a result of feeling unsafe (DuRant, Krowchuk, & Sinal, 1998), and to require medical treatment for assaultive injuries (Russell, Franz, & Driscoll, 2001). In turn, experiences of bullying and peer victimization are risk factors for multiple adverse mental health outcomes among sexual minority youths (Garofalo et al., 1998) and partially account for sexual orientation- related health disparities (Almeida et al., 2009; Bontempo & D'Augelli, 2002; Coker, Austin, & Schuster, 2010; Garofalo, Wolf, Wissow, Woods, & Goodman, 1999; Russell & Joyner, 2001). Despite consistent epidemiologic evidence for sexual orientation disparities in bullying and associated outcomes, the causes of these disparities remain inadequately understood. This study addresses this gap in the literature by examining the role of the social environment in contributing to bullying that targets sexual minority youths. To accomplish this aim, we developed a novel ecologic measure of an environmental risk factor for sexual minority bullying-namely, geocoded police record data on the rate of LGBT...