Sexual Orientation, Gender & Adolescent Involvement in Delinquency

The current study examines whether differences exist between sexual minority and heterosexual youth within the domain of delinquent behavior. Analyses rely on data from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health, and due to the nature of the dependent variables, use negative binomial regression. The analyses highlight several categories of sexual minority respondents: those who reported same-gender attraction or behavior as adolescents, but did not report sexual minority identification as an adult (adolescent-only), those who only reported adult identification (adult-only), and those who were consistent at both the adolescent and adult interviews (consistent-sexual minority, and consistent-heterosexual-the contrast group). Overall, males and females demonstrated very different patterns. Adult-only males had significantly lower delinquency scores, while adolescent-only males had higher scores. This difference was largely due to the number of delinquent friends. All three categories of female sexual minorities demonstrated higher delinquency scores, but these differences could not be explained.