Measuring Multiple Minority Stress: The LGBT People of Color Microaggressions Scale

By Kimberly F. Balsam, Y. Molina, B. Beadnell, Jane M. Simoni, Karina L. Walters. Cultural diversity & ethnic minority psychology, 2011

885 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Lesbian, gay, and bisexual individuals who are also racial/ethnic minorities (LGBT-POC) are a multiply marginalized population subject to microaggressions associated with both racism and heterosexism. To date, research on this population has been hampered by the lack of a measurement tool to assess the unique experiences associated with the intersection of these oppressions. To address this gap in the literature, we conducted a three-phase, mixed method empirical study to assess microaggressions among LGBT-POC. The LGBT People of Color Microaggressions Scale is an 18-item self-report scale assessing the unique types of microaggressions experienced by ethnic minority LGBT adults. The measure includes three subscales: (a) Racism in LGBT communities, (b) Heterosexism in Racial/Ethnic Minority Communities, and (c) Racism in Dating and Close Relationships, that are theoretically consistent with prior literature on racial/ethnic minority LGBTs and have strong psychometric properties including internal consistency and construct validity in terms of correlations with measures of psychological distress and LGBT-identity variables. Men scored higher on the LGBT-PCMS than women, lesbians and gay men scored higher than bisexual women and men, and Asian Americans scored higher than African Americans and Latina/os.

Subfields: Gender Studies, Social Psychology, Sociology and Political Science

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/d8a379c0355d1479bee571eb9c1668c21bc018e1

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Citations in the corpus

A Preliminary Report on the Relationship Between Microaggressions Against Black People and Racism Among White College Students (2017, background): “In addition, researchers have tailored the microaggression construct to other groups and have found that multiple stigmatized groups report experiencing microaggressions regularly, including lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer (LGBTQ) individuals (Balsam et al. 2011; Nadal 2013), Asian Am”
Racial microaggressions and perceptions of Internet memes (2016, result): “In order to maximize the power of our comparisons, and in line with previous research in the area of microaggressions (e.g., Balsam et al., 2011; Nadal, 2011), we combined racial/ethnic minority participants into a single group, People of Color. counterparts (Pew Research Center, 2014; Tynes et…”
Multiple minorities as multiply marginalized: Applying the minority stress theory to LGBTQ people of color (2017, methodology): “Using a series of three mixed-methods studies, Balsam et al. (2011) developed, validated, and administered a tool to capture the types, frequency, and perceived stress of microaggressions experienced by LGBTQ-POC with demographic trends.”
Development of the heteronormative attitudes and beliefs scale (2015, background): “, Balsam et al., 2011; Grollman, 2012). The effects of heteronormativity are theorised to exist on several levels: institutional, interpersonal and even intrapsychic (e.g., internalised homophobia). For example, Nielsen et al. (2000) observed that male postsecondary (college) students who violated t”
Health Care Experiences of Transgender Binary and Nonbinary University Students (2019, background): “Whether race (being a Person of Color vs. White) is related to perceived misgendering and affirming treatment, as LGBTQ People of Color face a unique constellation of microaggressions stemming from racial, sexual orientation, and gender-related stigmas (Balsam et al., 2011).”
Interpersonal and Systemic Microaggressions Toward Transgender People: Implications for Counseling (2012, background): “…that LGB people experience microaggressions in their everyday lives (Nadal, Issa, et al., 2011; Nadal, Wong, et al., 2011) and in therapy (Shelton & Delgado-Romero, 2011), and that LGBT people of color experience microaggressions based on their racial and sexual identities (Balsam et al., 2011).”
Fairness for Unobserved Characteristics: Insights from Technological Impacts on Queer Communities (2021, background): “Queer people of colour experience disproportionate exposure to online (and ofﬂine) abuse (Balsam et al. 2011), even within the queer community itself.”
Multiple minority stress: The role of proximal and distal stress on mental health outcomes among lesbian, gay, and bisexual people of color (2019, methodology): “The LGBT People of Color Microaggressions Scale (MS; Balsam et al., 2011) was used as a measure of distal stress.”
Hearing Gender: Voice-Based Gender Classification Processes and Transgender Health Inequality (2019, background): “Furthermore, individuals can experience multiple sources of minority stress: the disadvantages associated with belonging to one marginalized identity can be compounded by additional marginalized identities and social conditions (Balsam et al. 2015; Choo and Ferree 2010; Diaz et al. 2001; Gorman et a”
LGBTQ+ Latino/a Young People’s Interpretations of Stigma and Mental Health: An Intersectional Minority Stress Perspective (2020, background): “Significantly, this everyday labor, oftentimes in response to microaggressions, occurs outside of just the workplace (Evans and Moore 2015) and spans other multiply marginalized groups, notably LGBTQ1 people of color (Balsam et al. 2011; Hatzenbuehler et al. 2009; Nadal et al. 2017).”