Girl2Girl: How to develop a salient pregnancy prevention program for cisgender sexual minority adolescent girls.

Introduction: Although sexual minority girls are more likely than heterosexual girls to be pregnant during adolescence, programs tailored to their needs are non-existent. Here we describe the iterative development of Girl2Girl, a text messaging-based pregnancy prevention program for cisgender lesbian, gay, bisexual and other sexual minority (LGB+) girls across the United States.

Methods: Four activities are described: 1) 8 online focus groups to gain feedback about intended program components (n = 160), 2) writing the intervention content, 3) 4 online Content Advisory Teams that reviewed and provided feedback on the salience of drafted intervention content (n = 82), and 4) a beta test to confirm program functionality, the feasibility of assessments, and the enrollment protocol (n = 27).

Understanding the Mental Health of Transgender and Nonbinary Youth.

Purpose: Currently, there is a lack of nationwide data examining the mental health of transgender and nonbinary youth. Furthermore, relatively little is known about how the mental health of transgender and nonbinary youth compares to that of their cisgender lesbian, gay, bisexual, queer, and questioning peers or differences within subgroups of transgender and nonbinary youth. The goal of the present study was to better understand the mental health of transgender and nonbinary youth.

A Cross-sectional Study Examining the (In)congruency of Sexual Identity, Sexual Behavior, and Romantic Attraction among Adolescents in the US.

Objective: To examine how sexual identity, romantic attraction, and sexual behavior co-relate for cisgender adolescents.

Study Design: The Teen Health and Technology survey was a cross-sectional, self-report online survey. More than 5000 youth between 13 and 18 years of age were randomly recruited through Harris Panel OnLine's panel as well as outreach by GLSEN to over-recruit lesbian, gay, bisexual, and other sexual minority youth.

Health Indicators of Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Other Sexual Minority (LGB+) Youth Living in Rural Communities.

Objective: To investigate whether the intersectionality of being lesbian, gay, bisexual, and other sexual minority youth (LGB+) and living in a rural community may portend worse concurrent health indicators than identifying as heterosexual and/or living in a nonrural community.

Study Design: Data were collected online between 2010 and 2011 from 5100 13- to-18-year-old youth across the US. Youth were randomly recruited from within the Harris Panel Online and through targeted outreach efforts to LGBT+ youth by a youth-focused nonprofit.

The relationship between bias-based peer victimization and depressive symptomatology across sexual and gender identity.

Objective: The current study examined the prevalence of seven types of bias-based victimization (sexual orientation, gender, expression of gender, race or ethnicity, disability, religion, and physical appearance), with an emphasis on identifying similarities and differences by sexual and gender identity, and explored the association between victimization and depressive symptomatology for different subgroups.

Methods: Data from the Teen Health and Technology Study were collected nationally online between 2010 and 2011 from 5,542 13 to 18-year-old youth in the United States.

Results: Half of all youth reported experiencing some form of bias-based victimization.