THE ASSOCIATIONS BETWEEN SEXUAL VICTIMIZATION AND HEALTH OUTCOMES AMONG LGBQA COLLEGE STUDENTS: EXAMINING THE MODERATING ROLE OF SOCIAL SUPPORT

Sexual victimization is a prevailing public health concern that differentially impacts sexual minority populations (i.e., people who identify as lesbian, gay, bisexual, asexual, or queer) compared with their heterosexual and cisgender counterparts (McCauley et al., 2018). Studies have shown that sexual violence is associated with depressive symptoms, post-traumatic stress disorder symptoms, and alcohol use (Aosved et al., 2011; Bedard-Gilligan et al, 2011; Carey et al., 2018) among heterosexual college students. However, we know less about the potential effects of sexual victimization on health outcomes among sexual minority college students. Understanding these relations are especially important because sexual minority college students often experience unique challenges and are at increased risk of sexual victimization in comparison to their counterparts (Cantor et al., 2015; Edwards et al., 2015). Moreover, few studies to date have examined the moderating role of social support in buffering the links between sexual victimization and health outcomes. Guided by the minority stress framework (Meyer, 2003), the current study examined the extent to which sexual victimization influences health outcomes (i.e., depressive symptoms, post-traumatic stress disorder symptoms, and alcohol use disorder) among sexual minority college students. Furthermore, we examined whether social support moderated the association between sexual victimization and each health outcome. The current study included 234 students who identified as being part of the Queer community (e.g., Gay, Lesbian, Asexual, and Queer) from a larger university-wide study (i.e., Spit for Science; Dick et al., 2014). The participants in the present study were 18-22 years old (M = 18.46, SD = .412) and majority female (i.e., 74%). Fifty-six percent of the participants self- identified as White, 16% as Black or African American, 13% as Asian, and 15% as American Indian, Latinx, Pacific Islander, or Multiracial. Students provided online self-reports of their sexual victimization experiences (Blake et al., 1990), social support (Hays et al., 1995), depressive symptoms (Derogatis et al., 1973), post-traumatic stress disorder symptoms (Weathers et al., 2013) and alcohol use (DSM-V). We used a series of regression models in Mplus v 7.2 (Muthén & Muthén, 1998–2014) to test our research questions, with multiple imputation to handle missing data. Findings indicated that sexual victimization was positively related to depressive symptoms (b = .21, p = .00), post- traumatic stress disorder symptoms (b = .43, p = .00), and alcohol use disorder (b = .45, p = .00). Furthermore, social support significantly moderated the association between sexual victimization and depressive symptoms, however, in a direction contrary to hypotheses. Specifically, greater sexual victimization was associated with greater depressive symptoms among sexual minority college students with higher levels of social support (b = .29, p = .00), and the association was not significant for sexual minority college students with lower levels of social support (b = .13, p = .26; Figure 1). Discussion will center on the detrimental effects of sexual victimization on health outcomes among sexual minority college students, as well as providing potential explanations and future directions for the nuanced ways social support functions in the lives of sexual minority college students.https://scholarscompass.vcu.edu/gradposters/1079/thumbnail.jp