Hope in LGBTQ+ youth
This is a long post because it contains information that may well apply to other marginalized groups. Poteat et al. (2023) published “Gender-Sexuality Alliance Meeting Experiences Predict Weekly Variation in Hope among LGBTQ+ Youth” in Child Development. Here’s the highly edited article with some information in bold:
Hope is considered a marker of resilience among youth facing oppression, including LGBTQ+ youth. It constitutes a positive orientation toward the future, a belief in one's ability to identify and pursue goals, and a sense of agency to persist through obstacles. In this way, there are both cognitive and emotional elements to hope. Hope can be conceived as a relatively stable trait or as a momentary state and feeling that fluctuates for an individual. Hope is associated with indicators of positive development, such as stress resilience, self-esteem, life satisfaction, and contribution to one's community. In this light, scholars have pointed to hope as a means to heal from the effects of discrimination. Indeed, among LGBTQ+ youth (i.e., lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer youth) and youth of color, hope is associated with greater well-being and use of healthy coping strategies.
The relational developmental systems (RDS) paradigm provides a conceptual lens for understanding how GSAs may promote hope among LGBTQ+ youth. RDS is a meta-theory for understanding positive youth development (Lerner et al., 2015). It emphasizes that adolescence is a period during which individuals show plasticity in their development, which enables them to adapt and thrive. Importantly, the social environments in which youth develop can promote positive development by providing resources and supports that match a youth's needs, interests, and strengths. RDS also highlights the reciprocal influence between youth and their environments, such that youth have a role in shaping their environments. A number of youth programs and settings that aim to promote positive youth development are grounded in these principles. Groups may differ in some ways (e.g., the topics they cover), but they share several features that RDS deems essential for fostering positive development. These features include providing a safe and supportive space for youth to interact with peers, opportunities for them to take on leadership roles, and adults available for support and guidance.
Gender-Sexuality Alliances operate in ways that align with the principles of RDS. They generally meet weekly or biweekly, during or after school. GSAs aim to provide a space safe for LGBTQ+ youth and their peer allies to socialize and build community, seek and provide social-emotional support, access LGBTQ+ affirming resources, and advocate against discrimination. Thus, with their aims and structure grounded in positive youth development, GSAs are a relevant context that could foster hope among LGBTQ+ youth. Some evidence suggests that youth feel a sense of empowerment, self-esteem, and agency from their GSA membership.
Scholars have underscored the importance of hope among youth from marginalized populations, and our findings suggest that GSAs are setting for cultivating hope among LGBTQ+ youth. Over a 2-month period of weekly reports, LGBTQ+ youth's experiences in their GSA meetings—their perceived support from the group, advisor responsiveness, and amount of leadership and responsibility taken in each meeting—predicted subsequent variability in their sense of hope. These effects were moderated by the span of time between a GSA meeting and when youth reported their current sense of hope.
Our results lend support to the dual consideration of hope as both a relatively stable trait and a momentary state that fluctuates for individuals. The majority of variance in LGBTQ+ youth's hope was between youth, indicating that certain LGBTQ+ youth, on average, tended to be more hopeful than others over the 2-month period. In this respect, our findings speak to the relevance and overall importance of prior studies that have considered differences between LGBTQ+ youth in their health and well-being while identifying correlates or predictors of such differences.
Notwithstanding these interindividual differences, close to one-third of the total variance in LGBTQ+ youth's hope was within individuals. This reflects a notable degree of fluctuation in a youth's own sense of hope from week to week. Essentially, even “more hopeful” LGBTQ+ youth experienced less hopeful moments than usual in some weeks, and “less hopeful” LGBTQ+ youth still experienced moments of greater hope than they usually did. This nuance highlights the importance of attending to a youth's own variability in hope and identifying predictors of those moments when they feel more or less hopeful.
All three indicators of LGBTQ+ youth's experiences in their GSA meetings (perceived group support, advisor responsiveness, and leadership) predicted variability in their sense of hope from week to week. First, youth reported feeling a greater sense of hope on days after GSA meetings where they had felt more supported by the group, relative to days after meeting where they had felt less supported. Perceived support was no longer a statistically significant predictor of youth's hope when hope was reported 1 week following the referenced GSA meeting.
Second, youth reported feeling a greater sense of hope on days after GSA meetings where they had felt their advisors were more responsive, relative to days after meeting where they had felt their advisors were less responsive. Because a youth's needs and interests evolve, and advisors interact with multiple members during a meeting, advisors may have been more perceptive of and responsive to a youth's needs in some meetings than in others. In this respect, our finding points to the need to consider advisors' efforts and their potential effects within a more immediate timeframe than has been considered in extant research on GSAs and youth programs in general.
Although advisor responsiveness in a GSA meeting was a weaker predictor of youth's current hope on days more distal to the meeting, it remained statistically significant even 1 week after the meeting. The effect of advisor responsiveness may have been more enduring than youth's perceived support from the group for several reasons. Advisors may have been in a position to provide some forms of support that a youth's peers or even adults in other settings could not (e.g., speaking with a youth's teachers about respecting their name and gender pronouns).
Third, youth reported feeling a greater sense of hope on days after GSA meetings where they had taken on more leadership and responsibility, relative to days after meetings where they had taken on less. A youth's leadership in a given meeting may carry some proximal benefit for their relative sense of hope in the following days. Even during the pandemic and in virtual meetings, youth may have had leadership opportunities, such as in deciding upon the meeting agenda, choosing topics for discussion and co-facilitating those discussions with their peers online, or taking initiative to reach out to peers who could not attend the meeting. It may be beneficial for GSA advisors and youth leaders to be mindful of this from meeting to meeting, as leadership could be one way to engender hope among members.
In contrast to a youth's perceived support and advisor responsiveness, a youth's level of leadership in a GSA meeting more strongly predicted their current hope on days more distal to the GSA meeting. Through their leadership in a meeting, a youth may have taken on a task or committed to a larger effort that sustained their contribution beyond that immediate meeting (e.g., event planning). If so, this could have gradually magnified the predictive effect of their leadership in that meeting on their sense of hope over the days that followed. This further affirms the value of leadership opportunities for youth members within GSA meetings.
As reflected in our findings above, the primary emphasis and advancement of the current study were to illuminate within-individual variability in a youth's GSA experiences and hope, while adjusting for the variability that did exist between youth on these same factors. None of our predictors of individual differences in youth's average levels of hope over the 2-month period were statistically significant. We offer several explanations for these null findings. First, it may be that associations based on individual differences are more evident when considering youth's experiences over longer spans of time. Second, these null findings may be tied to the COVID-19 pandemic. This was a time of volatility and uncertainty that likely hindered youth's abilities to anticipate or plan too far ahead into the future, regardless of their GSA experiences or sociocultural background. Finally, our null findings could be due to the more limited statistical power at the individual level, as our focus was on within-individual variability. In sum, it remains important to consider both within- and between-individual characteristics that may contribute to youth's immediate and longer-term sense of hope.
This is important work for several reasons. It highlights the power of support groups for marginalized youth and identifies ways to encourage hope. It also addresses the variability between youth in their general hopefulness and well as the impacts of transitory experiences in meetings. Finally, it emphasizes that frequency and quality of support matters to vulnerable youth.