Abstract
Sexual minority adolescent girls are overrepresented in the justice system. This study used the minority stress model and psychological mediation framework to investigate a pathway for this disparity among court-involved girls ages 14–18 (N = 226; mean age: 15.58; 48% sexual minority). The hypotheses were that sexual minority status would be associated with delinquency, bullying exposure would be associated with delinquency indirectly via emotion regulation difficulties, and the relationship between bullying exposure and emotion regulation difficulties would be stronger for sexual minority girls. Bullying exposure and emotion regulation difficulties were not related. Sexual minority status was related to delinquency, and emotion regulation difficulties mediated this relationship. The findings suggest interventions to build emotion regulation skills may reduce delinquency for sexual minority girls.
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Notes
Although there are conceptual distinctions between bullying and peer victimization among adolescents (Ybarra, Espelage, & Mitchell, 2014), both are potential distal minority stress processes according to the minority stress model.
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A.B. conceived of the study, participated in the development of the analytic plan, performed the statistical analysis, participated in the interpretation of the data, and drafted the manuscript; C.H. conceived of the study and participated in the interpretation of the data; D.B. participated in the conceptualization of the study, the development of the analytic plan, and the interpretation of the data; C.R. participated in the conceptualization of the study and the interpretation of the data. All authors read and approved the final manuscript.
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This research was supported by the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health & Human Development (R01HD080780) and the National Institutes of Mental Health (T32MH078788).
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Barnett, A.P., Houck, C.D., Barker, D. et al. Sexual Minority Status, Bullying Exposure, Emotion Regulation Difficulties, and Delinquency Among Court-Involved Adolescent Girls. J Youth Adolescence 51, 471–485 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10964-021-01542-9
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10964-021-01542-9