Stephen Thomas Russell

University of Texas at Austin | UT · Department of Human Development and Family Sciences

Teacher interventions play a crucial role in fostering a more inclusive school climate amidst homophobic bullying incidents. However, the strategies employed by teachers and the influencing factors are understudied. This study explored individual and contextual factors associated with teachers' intentions to intervene in situations of homophobic bu...

In order to promote school safety for sexual and gender minority youth (SGMY), many schools implement strategies such as SGM‐focused policies and gender‐sexuality alliances (GSAs). Little is known about the effects such strategies have over time on feelings of safety at school for SGMY. Hierarchical Linear Models were conducted using longitudinal d...

Purpose: The purpose of this study was to assess the relationship between adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) exposure, perceived discrimination, and anxiety and depressive symptoms in sexual and gender minoritized (SGM) adults in the United States. Methods: Respondents (n = 4445) from a national Qualtrics research panel completed a web-based surv...

Homophobic bullying constitutes a serious threat to adolescent well-being and could be understood as an ecological phenomenon, influenced by diverse school, regional, and community contexts. This study examined geographic variations in the relationship between school characteristics and homophobic bullying. Data from 2244 California schools, includ...

Sexual minority youth experience disproportionate rates of mental health symptomatology relative to their heterosexual peers. Less is known about why these disparities have persisted despite growing public awareness of sexual diversity. The developmental collision hypothesis states that increased cultural visibility of sexual diversity has accelera...

BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVES Binge drinking disparities between sexual and gender minority (SGM) students and their heterosexual, cisgender peers are well-established. Data limitations have precluded understandings of whether the onset and progression of these disparities differ by grade. Additionally, little is known about whether and how SGM-related...

Objective: Sexual minority disparities in behavioral health (e.g., mental health and substance use) are well-established. However, sexual identity is dynamic, and changes are common across the life course (e.g., identifying with a monosexual [lesbian or gay] label and later with a plurisexual [queer, pansexual, etc.] label). This study assessed wh...

Prior studies have reported generational declines in the ages at which sexual minority people first experience sexual identity development milestones (e.g., first awareness of same-sex attraction, self-realization of a sexual minority identity, same-sex sexual behavior, and disclosure); yet most studies have relied on retrospective data from adults...

Importance Concerns about the mental health of youths going through gender identity transitions have received increased attention. There is a need for empirical evidence to understand how transitions in self-reported gender identity are associated with mental health. Objective To examine whether and how often youths changed self-reported gender id...

For lesbian, gay, bisexual, or queer (i.e., sexual minority [SM]) youth, coming out is an important developmental milestone and is typically associated with positive well-being. However, coming out in high school may entail a higher risk of school-based victimization. Due to the greater risk of homophobic bullying, the implications of being out in...

Disparities in youth homelessness by racial/ethnic, sexual, and gender identities are well documented, though this literature lacks specificity regarding intersectional social identities of youth who are most likely to experience homelessness. Population-based cross-sectional data on youth from the 2019 Minnesota Student Survey (N = 80,456) were us...

Discrimination is a risk factor for compromised mental health among sexually diverse people. However, few studies examine the implications of experiencing discrimination tied to multiple identities for sexually diverse adults’ prospective mental health. This study takes an intersectional perspective to investigate how attributing discrimination to...

This study investigated differences in depressive symptoms, loneliness, and self‐esteem for monosexual (lesbian, gay) and plurisexual (bisexual, pansexual, queer) sexual minority youth (SMY) by relationship status (single, partnered) and relationship configuration (same‐gender partner, different‐gender partner). Participants included 338 SMY ( M ag...

Purpose: Most extant scholarship that examines the health experiences of sexual and gender diverse youth (SGDY) is limited in the ability to apply an intersectional framework due to small sample sizes and limitations in analytic methods that only analyze the independent contribution of social identities. To address this gap, this study explored the...

Introduction: Sexual and gender minority adverse childhood experiences (SGM-ACEs) are identity-based forms of early life adversity. Exposure to SGM-ACEs is associated with increased odds for depression, anxiety and post-traumatic stress disorder in SGM adults. The purpose of this study was to further test a revised version of the measure in a U.S....

This cross-sectional study analyzes data from 2 statewide school surveys to document the experiences of sexual and gender minoritized Asian American, Native Hawaiian, and Pacific Islander students in grades 9 through 12 who reported bullying related to their identity.

Interpersonal supports are protective against multiple negative health outcomes for youth, such as emotional distress and substance use. However, finding interpersonal support may be difficult for youth exposed to intersecting racism, heterosexism, and cisgenderism, who may feel they are “outsiders within” their multiple communities. This study exp...

Background: Building on decades of research into the long-term developmental impacts of adverse childhood experiences (ACEs), researchers have called for expanding the ACEs framework to include experiences specific to minoritized identities. Recent empirical research has led to the development of a measure of sexual and gender minority adverse chi...

Introduction The “model minority” stereotype disguises heterogeneity among Asian American youth, many of whom are harmed by policies and attitudes that assume this population to be uniformly high achieving and “problem free.” The current study uses an intersectional lens to disaggregate this population by ethnicity and sexual orientation subgroups...

Publicly engaged social science can help to maximize research use for program and policy change toward equity. In what follows, we describe The Stories and Numbers Project as an example of publicly engaged research that moves the robust science of supporting LGBTQ+ (and all) students beyond the university and into the public sphere. We provide an o...

Family members' reactions to youth identity disclosure are important predictors of well-being for lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, or questioning (LGBTQ) youth. To better understand potential variation within and across families' current reactions, this study established latent profiles of family level reaction patterns and examined pred...

Disparities in mental health and bullying between SGM youth and their heterosexual, cisgender peers are well-established. There remain questions about whether the onset and progression of these disparities differ across adolescence-knowledge critical for screening, prevention, and intervention. To address this, the current study estimates age-based...

Sexual minority adolescents are more likely to have obesity compared to their heterosexual peers, but little is known about potential contributors to this disparity that lie outside of individual-level health behaviors, such as diet and exercise. One possible contributor is school violence victimization, a factor associated with overweight/obesity...

Sexual identity labels and meanings have been expanding. We explore how sexual identities are taking shape, intertwining, and emerging in new forms among a growing number of LGBTQ+ people (i.e., lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, and questioning, or people whose identities are outside the historically privileged or dominant groups of heter...

Salient practices in the parenting literature-support and control-have seldom been applied to understanding lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, or questioning (LGBTQ) youth mental health. We examine associations among perceived parental social support, psychological control, and depressive symptoms for LGBTQ youth in the United States (n =...

Background: Lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer and questioning (LGBTQ) youth are overrepresented in foster care and report greater substance use during adolescence. Objective: Using an intersectional lens, the current study investigates differences in foster care placement and variation in substance use at the intersections of foster car...

LGBTQ youth often experience unsafe school climates and are at greater risk for compromised mental health relative to their heterosexual and cisgender peers. The psychological mediation model posits that these health inequities are produced by minority stress, which operates through several key mechanisms: rumination, emotion regulation, and coping...

Bias-based bullying influences health, academic success, and social well-being. However, little quantitative work takes an intersectional perspective to understand bias-based bullying among youth with marginalized social positions, which is critical to prevention. This article describes the application of exhaustive chi-square automatic interaction...

Objective The adolescent health consequences of the school-to-prison pipeline remain underexplored. We test whether initiating components of the school-to-prison pipeline—suspensions, expulsions, and school policing—are associated with higher school-average levels of student substance use, depressed feelings, and developmental risk in the following...

In this essay, we explore diversity in sexual and gender identities, with a focus on implications of the current politicized moment for lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, or questioning youth. As youth come out at younger ages, their personal identity development collides with the adolescence period characterized by peer influence, stigma,...

Background: Sexual minority men (SMM) experience higher suicidal ideation and suicide attempts than the general population. We examined the associations of adverse childhood experiences (ACES) and protective and compensatory childhood experiences (PACES) with suicidal ideation and suicide attempts in adulthood via thwarted belongingness and percei...

What follows is a transcript of the first such community conversation focused on the recent progression of anti-LGBTQ+ legislation. During the 2021-22 legislative session at least 15 states have considered or passed bills that would affect ways of discussing, addressing, or interacting with LGBTQ+ youth in schools. This legislation includes prohibi...

Purpose: This study examined the health profile of a national probability sample of three cohorts of sexual minority people, and the ways that indicators of health vary among sexual minority people across age cohorts and other defining sociodemographic characteristics, including sexual identity, gender identity, and race/ethnicity. Methods: The Gen...

Objective: Limited research assesses how sexual orientation and gender identity and expression (SOGIE)-based discrimination affects alcohol use above and beyond non-SOGIE-related discrimination and how this may differ for sexual minority subgroups. We examined if SOGIE-related discrimination is additive in affecting alcohol use above and beyond non...

Parenthood is an aspiration shared by a majority of U.S. adults. However, previous research has found that sexual minority adults (e.g., lesbian, gay, bisexual [LGB]) are less likely than heterosexual counterparts to be parents or desire to become parents in the future. To date, few studies have examined how minority stress (i.e., everyday discrimi...

Purpose Research has identified persistent disparities in alcohol, e-cigarette, and marijuana use, by sexual orientation, gender identity, and race/ethnicity. Using an intersectionality framework, the present study analyzes three large datasets to identify intersecting social positions bearing the highest burden of substance use. Methods Data from...

Sexual identity development milestones mark the ages at which sexual minority people first experience key developmental events including same-sex attraction, self-realization of a sexual minority identity, same-sex sexual behavior and romantic relationships, and sexual identity disclosure. Most studies of milestones use variable-centered, rather th...

This study examined the extent to which social stress stemming from a stigmatized social status (i.e., minority stress) was associated with three domains of health in younger as compared with older age cohorts of sexual minority individuals. Data were analyzed from the Generations Study, a longitudinal study using a probability sample ( N = 1518) o...

Three models of recalled childhood gender nonconformity (GNC) and maltreatment are proposed to explain disparities in current psychological distress and lifetime suicidality among sexual minority individuals, using a United States probability sample of cisgender lesbian/gay (n = 701), bisexual (n = 606), and other (e.g., queer, n = 182) adults. Ind...

Recently, schools have focused on supportive (e.g., behavioral supports) rather than punitive (e.g., suspension) strategies to reduce school pushout among marginalized youth. We examined the association between suspension and discipline practices for students with intersecting identities (e.g., LGBT youth of color). We used teacher and student data...

Relationship identities are established through romantic interactions and informed by sociohistorical context. The associations between lesbian, gay, and bisexual (LGB) identities and identities in other domains, including relationship identities, have yet to receive sufficient attention from researchers. In this exploratory study, through a qualit...

Purpose The purpose of the study is to establish prospective relationships among school mean levels of substance use, developmental risk and resilience factors, and school discipline. Methods We linked 2003–2014 data from the California Healthy Kids Survey and the Civil Rights Data Collection, from more than 4,800 schools and 4,950,000 students. W...

Importance: Homophobic bullying-which is motivated by actual or perceived sexual orientation-is a common experience among youth and is more strongly associated with adverse outcomes than bullying unrelated to bias. Yet current approaches to reducing homophobic bullying either lack empirical evidence or encounter significant obstacles. Thus, the fi...

Schools are often unsafe for lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, and questioning (LGBTQ) students; they frequently experience negative or hostile school climates, including bullying and discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity at school. Negative school climates and discriminatory experiences can threaten LGBTQ student...

Encouraging bystander intervention is an effective strategy to prevent episodes of bullying victimization at school. Yet there remains a paucity of evidence on this behavior in situations of homophobic name-calling, a form of peer victimization aimed at mocking individuals based on their actual or perceived sexual orientation. The existing research...

Professional development training for school personnel on issues related to sexual and gender identity (i.e., SOGI training) is a school strategy designed to prevent health and educational disparities for lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) youth at school. Yet we know surprisingly little about how the presence of this practice at school...

Sexual minority youth (i.e., lesbian, gay, and bisexual youth; LGB) of color have multiple minoritized identities, and few studies examine the implications of intersectional minority stressors for their prospective mental health. The current study tested three intersectional hypotheses: the additive hypothesis—racial discrimination and LGB victimiz...

Purpose: We describe the timing of suicidality across the life span in three cohorts of sexual minority adults. We hypothesized that suicide attempts coincide with the coming out period and that younger sexual minority people, who grew up in more accepting social environments, will have lower prevalence of suicide attempts than older generations....

Victimization is a well-established driver of sexual minority youth’s (SMY) mental health and substance use risk. The current study examined and extended this research by exploring how victimization, cybervictimization, and non-parental supportive adults contribute to SMY’s vulnerability to poor mental health and substance use. Using data from the...

Background School assets—such as connectedness, caring relationships with adults, high behavioral expectations from adults, and meaningful participation—are associated with positive outcomes for adolescents. However, little is known about how school assets differ among adolescents with intersecting marginalized identities. Methods We used the 2013...

Disclosing a sexual minority (e.g., lesbian, gay, or bisexual) identity to others is an ongoing process throughout life. Research shows that disclosure is stressful, and this stress is related to poorer mental health for sexual minority youth. However, there are few theoretically grounded studies examining disclosure stress and its prospective asso...

Although most lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and questioning youths are quite resilient and emerge from adolescence as healthy adults, the effects of stigma and heterosexism can contribute to health disparities. Part 2 of this first-of-its-kind 3-part series can help pediatric primary care providers become stronger allies for TGD patients and...

Sexual minority youth experience a variety of challenges that are further exacerbated by intersectionality and interactions with various educators. Using a directed form of empirical, qualitative research, the authors explored the retrospective school experiences (as part of life stories) of three cohorts of sexual minorities (Stonewall Generation,...

During the past 50 years, there have been marked improvement in the social and legal environment of sexual minorities in the United States. Minority stress theory predicts that health of sexual minorities is predicated on the social environment. As the social environment improves, exposure to stress would decline and health outcomes would improve....

Part 1 of this first-of-its-kind 3-part series can help show how to break down the cycles of ignorance, shame, and toxic stress that harm children who identify as LGBTQ+ and improve their chances of leading happy, healthy adult lives. https://shop.aap.org/pediatric-collections-lgbtq-support-and-care-part-1-combatting-stigma-and-discrimination/

School climate is an important construct in research on adolescents. Yet, no known studies have evaluated whether the measured school climate constructs are equivalent across lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, questioning (LGBTQ), and heterosexual students as well as sex and grade levels. This study assessed measurement equivalence of a second-or...

The presence of Gay-Straight Alliances (GSAs) in schools has been linked to low rates of bullying for lesbian, gay, bisexual, questioning (LGBQ), transgender, and all students. However, little is known about how the heterogeneity in GSA functioning and school climates may affect these rates. This study examines whether a well-functioning GSA would...

The focus of the phenomenological qualitative study was on the lived experiences of U.S. educators who identified as lesbian, gay, and bisexual (LGB). Life story data regarding stress, coping, and identity were gathered, triangulated, and analyzed from 24 U.S. educators who identified as LGB teachers, mentors, and coaches. Four themes resulted: (a)...

Purpose Despite well-established substance use disparities between sexual and gender minority adolescents and their heterosexual, cisgender peers, there remain questions about whether there are developmental differences in the onset and progression of these disparities across adolescence. These perspectives are critical for prevention efforts. We t...

Introduction Sexual minority individuals (e.g., lesbian, gay, bisexual people) face sexual health inequalities related to their experiences with providers in sexual health care settings, yet few prior studies have focused on these experiences. Methods Thematic content analysis was used to analyze qualitative interviews with a diverse sample of 58...

Purpose: To synthesize the diverse body of literature on sexual and gender minority youth (SGMY) and sexual health education. Methods: We conducted a systematic search of the literature on SGMY and sexual health education, including SGMY perspectives on sexual health education, the acceptability or effectiveness of programs designed for SGMY, an...

Objective The study aimed to better understand the complexities of parental responses to coming out in the narratives from Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Queer, Pansexual, or Two‐Spirited (LGBQ+) individuals, and to examine whether those from recent cohorts experience a different parental response than those in older cohorts. Background Sexual minorities...

Sexual minority (lesbian, gay, bisexual, and same-sex attracted) youth and adults report elevated rates of alcohol use and abuse relative to their heterosexual peers; these differences are strongest for sexual minority girls and women. Although preliminary evidence suggests that unsupportive parenting and maladaptive parent-child relationship quali...

Background: Sexual minority populations in the United States have persistently higher rates of cigarette use than heterosexuals, partially driven by exposure to minority stressors (e.g., discrimination and victimization). Little is known about cigarette use across cohorts of sexual minority adults who came of age in distinctly different sociopolit...

Because sexual minorities are an at-risk population, researchers conducted retrospective life story interviews with 191 sexual minority people comprising participants from a marriage equality cohort, an HIV/AIDS epidemic cohort, and a Stonewall rebellion cohort. The participants were located within 80 miles of four major metropolitan areas in the U...

Utilizing a school-based sample of 895,218 students aged 10–18 years old, we examine differences in students’ school functioning, substance use, and mental health in schools with and without Gay-Straight Alliances (GSAs). In addition, we examine whether GSA presence is associated with these outcomes for students of color and LGBTQ students. Overall...

Using data from the first national probability sample of Black, White, and Latinx sexual minority people in the United States, we examined whether and how sexual identity development timing and pacing differs across demographic subgroups at the intersections of cohort, sex, sexual identity, and race/ethnicity. Among a sample of 1,491 participants a...

The focus of the phenomenological quality study is on the career development of sexual minority educators. Career decision making among sexual minorities, including those who are educators, is related to personhood. This empirical study explored data from 24 sexual minority educators (teachers, mentors, and coaches) to explore career development an...

The focus of the phenomenological quality study is on the career development of sexual minority educators. Career decision making among sexual minorities, including those who are educators, is related to personhood. This empirical study explored data from 24 sexual minority educators (teachers, mentors, and coaches) to explore career development an...

Scientific evidence regarding sexual minority populations has generally come from studies based on two types of samples: community-derived samples and probability samples. Probability samples are lauded as the gold standard of population research for their ability to represent the population of interest. However, while studies using community sampl...

As a fundamental aspect of the human experience, sexuality is experienced at every stage in the life span. Sexual values, behaviors, and health are important components of individual and family well‐being. Educating about such a fundamental aspect of life is both obvious and crucial. In this article, we consider the potential of sexuality education...

Sexual minority people face greater risk for compromised sexual health than their heterosexual peers, yet school-based sexuality education often excludes them. Little is known about whether or how sexual minority people’s sexuality education experiences have varied across sociohistorical contexts of rapid social change in both sexuality education a...

Genderqueer identities-those that challenge a strict binary between woman and man-are increasingly visible within mainstream culture and psychological research. However, little is known about generational differences in the lived experience of genderqueer people. Inductive thematic analysis of interviews with 30 genderqueer sexual minorities of 3 d...

Sexual minority youth (lesbian, gay, bisexual, and queer) are at-risk student population, and school counselors are responsible for helping them cope in a heterosexist society. This article reports the qualitative findings of a study that examined the process of coping during the school-age years among 81 sexual minority people. Data were collected...

Lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer (LGBTQ)-parent families are underrepresented in studies of family and parenthood. With the growing visibility of sexual and gender minority lives, there are an unprecedented number of opportunities to examine LGBTQ-parent families with large-scale datasets. Yet, population-based and representative data...

Purpose: Sampling lesbian, gay, and bisexual (LGB) people to recruit a national probability sample is challenging for many reasons, including the low base rate of LGB people in the population. To address this challenge, researchers have relied on diverse approaches to sampling LGB people. We aimed to test an innovative method to assemble a U.S. nat...

Introduction: The aim of the present study is to examine gender identity disparities in different kinds of weight-related health behaviors, including physical activity, participation in physical education at school, and healthy and unhealthy eating habits, and to investigate the relationship between school safety and such behaviors in a sample of...

LGBTQ youth are at greater risk for compromised health, yet large-scale health promotion programs for LGBTQ young people have been slow to develop. LGBTQ community-based organizations—which provide LGBTQ-focused support and services—have existed for decades, but have not been a focus of the LGBTQ youth health literature. The current study used a co...

The purpose of this study was to examine parental responses to transgender and gender nonconforming [TGNC] youths’ gender identities and explore associations of parent support with parental abuse, depressive symptoms, and LGBT-identity disclosure stress. TGNC youth (N = 129), ages 15–21 (M = 18.00, SD = 1.74), completed surveys (2011–2012); experie...

Although queer identity has been used among sexual minorities for decades, little is known about the population of queer-identified people in the U.S. We compared people who identify as queer (unweighted n = 88; weighted % = 5.8%) with those who identify as lesbian/gay (n = 833; 46.9%), bisexual (n = 493; 40.6%) or other sexual minority identities...

Interviewing is considered a key form of qualitative inquiry in psychology that yields rich data on lived experience and meaning making of life events. Interviews that contain multiple components informed by specific epistemologies have the potential to provide particularly nuanced perspectives on psychological experience. We offer a methodological...