Bias From Potentially Mischievous Responders on Large-Scale Estimates of Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, or Questioning (LGBQ)-Heterosexual Youth Health Disparities.

Objectives: To determine how sensitive estimates of lesbian, gay, bisexual, or questioning (LGBQ)-heterosexual youth health disparities are to the presence of potentially mischievous responders.

Methods: We used US data from the 2015 Youth Risk Behavior Survey, pooled across jurisdictions that included a question about sexual identity for a total sample of 148 960 students. We used boosted regressions (a machine-learning technique) to identify unusual patterns of responses to 7 screener items presumably unrelated to LGBQ identification, which generated an index of suspected mischievousness.