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Abstract:
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Youth Risk Behavior Surveys (YRBSs) from national, state, and large urban school district samples are designed to monitor health risk behaviors among students in grades 9-12. Many of these data sets are publicly available and are widely used for surveillance and academic research. In 1995, the Massachusetts YRBS assessed sexual minority status through two questions, one on sexual identity and one on sex of sexual contacts. Over time, more states and districts have added one or both of these questions to their YRBSs. In 2013, 17 state and 18 district YRBSs asked at least one of these questions, and their results were combined to create large data sets of population-based surveys to conduct public health research on risk behaviors among sexual minority youth. In 2015, for the first time, sexual minority status was assessed on the national YRBS. Our research will assess the demographic characteristics and health risk behaviors among sexual minority students as calculated in combined 2015 state YRBSs and district YRBSs data sets compared to the 2015 national YRBS, and determine whether combined site-level YRBSs are similar to the national YRBSs with respect to sexual minority youth.
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