Newly released data enable research on COVID-19-related stress in sexual minorities

People who are sexual minorities in the United States already experience high levels of stress, and the COVID-19 pandemic has exacerbated it. But, authors Manning and Kamp Dush wrote in their June article in Socius, “relatively little is known about the health of individuals according to sexual or gender identity, as only three states collected sexual orientation and gender identity as part of their COVID-19 surveillance health reporting.” They add that until recently, there were “no studies using population-based samples of COVID-19-related stress among sexual minority populations.” Helpfully, Manning and Kamp Dush are the co-creators of a new dataset, the National Couples’ Health and Time Study (NCHAT), United States, 2020-2021 (ICPSR 38417), which was released to the public last month via Data Sharing for Demographic Research. According to its creators, the study provides “the first opportunity to assess COVID-19 experiences and stress for a population-representative sample of individuals who identify as sexual minorities in same-gender and different-gender couples.” The NCHAT survey was conducted during the pandemic from September 2020 through April 2021 on a nationally representative sample of 3,642 respondents 20 to 60 years old who were married or cohabiting, with oversamples of individuals with racial and ethnic minority and sexual minority identities. The survey questionnaire was inclusive, with a broad set of sexual and gender identities, allowing respondents to report multiple identities, and it avoided use of heteronormative terms and items. Hence, the survey is suited to research about COVID, stress, family functioning, and physical and mental health and includes contextual and acute measures of race and racism, sexism, and heterosexism.

For the analysis the authors discussed in their Socius article, they used an NCHAT sample limited to 3,612 respondents who provided valid responses to questions that were both general indicators of stress, and questions specific to three domains: health, relationship, and economic stress. Manning and Kamp Dush emphasized that “individuals who are sexual minorities experience stress differently and are not a monolithic group.” They wanted to see if these differences in stress are explained in part by economic resources (household income), discrimination (microaggressions or health discrimination), social support (community and social ties), and physical health, as well as by type of sexual identity (i.e., gay, lesbian, bisexual, and individuals who identify as multiple identities or whose identities were not listed). Among their findings, the authors show that half of respondents who identified as sexual minorities reported that their stress increased during the pandemic, in contrast to 30 percent of heterosexual respondents. They also found that “respondents who identify as bisexual or other or multiple identities experience the highest levels of stress, even surpassing stress experienced by gays and lesbians.” And while they found that “economic resources, discrimination, social and community support, and health conditions are tied to reported stress levels, they do not explain differentials according to sexual identity.”