An empirical analysis of stressors for gay men and lesbians

This research describes the empirical classification of stressors for gay men and lesbians. Volunteer respondents were recruited through a free local gay and lesbian newspaper, through gay and lesbian student organizations nationwide, through gay and lesbian bookstores nationwide, and at a gay festival in St. Louis. Nine hundred seventy-nine (979) participants completed a 70-item measure with stressors that had been identified in previous qualitative research. Participants were asked to indicate the degree to which they had experienced stress associated with a variety of experiences. Participants also completed a measure of dysphoria (CES-D), responded about their degree of openness regarding sexual orientation, and provided information about their relationship status and involvement with gay groups and activities. Using confirmatory factor analysis, a six-factor model was predicted to account for the data. One-factor, six-factor, and ten-factor models were tested. The ten-factor model yielded the best fit with the data and accounted for 63.5% of the variance. The factor structure remained stable when gay men were compared to lesbians, when those endorsing a predominantly gay versus exclusively gay orientation were compared, and when those in a relationship were compared to those who were not in a relationship. Increased gay stress was associated with more dysphoria. Implications of these findings are discussed and directions for future research are considered.     

The Stigma of Race: Who Now Bears the Mark of Cain?*

Instances are cited from the U.S. and India in which individual whites and Brahmans were attacked as being guilty of prejudice and discrimination simply on the basis of their hereditary group membership. These are characterized as involving “stigma reversal,” defined as the imputation of guilt and moral inferority to the members of a dominant group on the basis of descent when the moral justification of the group's position of advantage is being redefined. Evidence of the use of stigma reversal as an argument in support of protective discrimination or preferential treatment of minority group members is presented. It is postulated that stigma reversal is related to changes in self-conception which accompany minority protest movements and redefinition of the sense of group position even by members of the dominant group. Dominant group members whose definition of the situation is that they are becoming victims themselves may lead to defensive reactions similar to those previously observed among traditional minorities. The negative consequences which stigma reversal may have for public policies designed to help disadvantaged minorities are discussed.     

DELIBERATELY BIASING SURVEY QUESTIONS

In “before” and “after” surveys of Attitudes Towards Random Breath Testing in South Australia, three basic versions of the questionnaire were used. In the first, a set of “lead-up” questions, which were designed to deliberately bias the results towards acceptance of the tests, was included before the main questions; in the second, there were no lead-up questions; in the third, a different set of lead-up questions was used, and was aimed at deliberately biasing the results against the tests. The results in two out of the four attempts to influence the answers (compared with no lead-up questions) were significant in the expected direction, and in the other two cases were in the correct direction but not significant. The difference between the positive-and negative-biasing versions was highly significant in both cases. It is important to be aware that changes in context rather than in question wording per se can give rise to effects which dwarf the sampling error.