Health-Related Disparities Between Young Adult Sexual Minority and Heterosexual Women

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Date
2023
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Publisher
University of Alabama Libraries
Abstract

The negative physical and psychological health outcomes which disproportionately affect sexual minority women (SMW), when compared to heterosexual women (HSW), may be attributed to community-wide perceptual differences in self-evaluation and/or the chronic exposure of sexual orientation-related psychosocial stressors (i.e., discrimination, stigma, prejudice, etc.). The limited research which has examined the potential effect of sexual orientation on negative health outcomes has yielded inconsistent results. Furthermore, there is a paucity of research specifically focusing on young adult women, who represent a unique subgroup of the population. The general purpose of this dissertation was to expand upon this understudied area with three separate research studies. Study 1 examined potential differences in relative adiposity (%Fat) and body dissatisfaction (BD) between young adult SMW and HSW. When comparing a combined group of SMW to HSW, SMW had moderately higher %Fat than HSW (p=.046, ES=.53); however, these results were not statistically significant when SMW were split into two groups, lesbian/gay and bisexual/plurisexual, and compared to HSW (V=0.064, F(4, 162)=1.33, p=.263). No differences in BD were observed regardless of SMW groupings (?=0.90, F(8, 156)=1.05, p=.404). Linear correlations were observed between %Fat, BD, and sexual orientation, such that higher %Fat was associated with greater BD and that sexual minority status was associated with lower body dissatisfaction; however, lesbian/gay sexual orientation seemed to intensify the association between %Fat and BD. Study 2 examined potential differences in cumulative allostatic load and physical activity (PA) between young adult SMW and HSW. Results indicated no differences in cumulative allostatic load (F(1, 38)=0.206, p=.652) or PA parameters (p<.05 for all) between young adult SMW and HSW. Study 3 examined potential differences in PA behaviors between SMW and HSW through a systematic review and meta-analysis. Although the results indicated that there were no significant differences in PA between SMW and HSW (ES=-0.038, 95%CI -0.179 to 0.102, p=0.576), differences in PA were associated with age (?=-0.018, 95%CI -0.034 to -0.003, p=0.022) and body mass index (?=-0.145, 95%CI -0.228 to -0.061, p=0.002). The results of this dissertation highlight the need for additional research in order to better understand the complex association between sexual orientation and health-related behaviors and outcomes among women.

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Electronic Thesis or Dissertation
Keywords
Allostatic load, Bisexual women, Lesbian women, LGBQ+, Physical activity, Sexual minority women
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