Research Findings

Bias and Harassment of LGBTQ Youth Remains a Widespread Issue in Our Schools (Dragowski, McCabe and Rubinson; in review)

• Ninety percent of a national sample of school psychologists, counselors, and teachers reported they observed this harassment in their schools.
• Over half the sample reported overhearing this harassment at least one a month.
• Forty-four percent of the sample reported they heard this harassment coming from other staff members.
• However, only 30% of educators reported that they intervened to address this harassment when it occurred.
• Student-generated harassment peaked in junior high years, at a time when youth are often psychologically unprepared to cope with this bullying. Unfortunately, we also found that staff-generated harassment also peaked at this time.
• Overall, educators report positive attitudes toward LGBTQ advocacy, relatively positive subjective norm, and generally favorable perceived ability to advocate for this student population.
• Educators also report an adequate fund of LGBTQ-related knowledge but are more familiar with consequences of harassment and bias than with developmental milestones of LGBTQ youth. At the same time, however, they feel inadequately trained in this area, both from the perspective of their work setting, as well as graduate training, and want to learn more on this topic.

Trained Mental Health Professionals May Not Have a Good Understanding of What LGBTQ Bias and Harassment Involves (McCabe, Dragowski and Rubinson; in press)

• Only 16% of school psychologists reported overhearing homophobic bias and harassment once a month or more frequently; however, 43% reported hearing “that’s so gay” or similar homophobic epithets in that same time period.
• This finding calls into question whether school psychologists understand what homophobic bias is, even when a definition is provided.
• School psychologists may be committing microaggressions, which are subtle and typically subconscious biases against LGBTQ individuals, when consciously they deny any bias.

A Behavioral Change Model Can Be Utilized to Organize and Improve Advocacy Efforts by Educational Professionals (McCabe, Rubinson, Dragowski and Elizalde-Utnick; in press)

• By measuring educators’ attitudes and knowledge, subjective norm of the school environment, and any perceived barriers to advocacy work, it is possible to focus training and intervention efforts to address shortcomings or barriers.
• This model would help to increase the intention to intervene to stop LGBTQ bias and harassment.

Graduate Students in Education at Brooklyn College Are Underprepared to Address LGBTQ Bias and Harassment in Schools (McCabe and Rubinson, 2008)

• While students endorsed strong social justice beliefs with regard to race, gender, class/poverty, language status, and special education, they did not spontaneously identify LGBTQ bias as a social justice concern.
• When directly asked, students were able to identify examples of bias and harassment toward LGBTQ youth in schools.
• However, most students reported a lack of knowledge about LGBTQ youth development, a lack of support from school colleagues to engage in LGBTQ advocacy, and concerns about their jobs and backlash from administration if they engaged in this advocacy.

Socialization Trends (Dragowski, Halkitis, Moeller and Siconolfi; in press)

Young gay men tend to socialize outside of their neighborhood. They also tend to meet their sexual partners via social circles and through the use of the Internet. Those youth who meet their sex partners via the Internet are at an increased risk to engage in unsafe/unprotected sex. Therefore, new prevention efforts must include a creation of strong and visible communities/social networks in all neighborhoods to promote healthy identities, and to encourage the development of communication skills needed to safely and satisfactorily navigate sexual and romantic encounters in various contexts. At the same time, representing a combination of risk and protective factors, the Internet should be utilized as an important platform for HIV prevention and intervention.

Posttraumatic Stress Symptoms Among LGB Youth (Dragowski, Halkitis, Grossman and D’Augelli, 2011)

Verbal and physical victimization based on sexual orientation victimization (SOV), childhood gender atypicality, internalized homophobia, and stressful life events are all correlated with posttraumatic stress symptoms among LGB youth. Moreover, SOV remains an important predictor of posttraumatic stress symptoms in these youth, even after statistically controlling for the other (above named) correlates.

Gender Identity Development (Dragowski, Scharrón-del Río, and Sandigorsky, 2011)

In a conceptual review paper, we have reviewed gender identity development in the context of biological, environmental, cultural, and diagnostic factors. With the upcoming fifth revision of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, we offered a critical consideration of childhood gender identity disorder, along with proposed diagnostic changes. We argued that meaningful understanding of issues surrounding gender identity is necessary for a conscientious assessment and diagnostic process that does not pathologize human diversity (in this case, diversity related to variability in gender expression of young children).