New trends in same-sex sexual contact for American adolescents?

In our article on the sexual orientation, sexual behavior, and sexual risk exposure of adolescents in the U.S. National Longitudinal Lesbian Family Study (NLLFS) (Gartrell, Bos, & Goldberg, 2011), we compared the sexual behavior of the 17-year-old adolescents in our sample with same-age adolescents in a national probability sample—the 2002 U.S. National Survey of FamilyGrowth(NSFGCycle6) (U.S.DepartmentofHealthand Human Services, 2005, 2006). The NSFG data were weighted to ensure that the sample was similar to the United States population in terms of gender, age, and race/ethnicity. The NLLFS and NSFG participants entered their responses to the questions directly into computers, in private. After obtaining the permission of the National Center for Health Statistics, the17-year-old adolescents in the NSFGCycle 6 were selected, consisting of 235 girls and 199 boys. For these 17-year-old NSFG adolescents, weighted frequencies and means were computed for the following variables: (1) heterosexual contact, same-sex contact, and the prevalence of sexually transmitted infections (separately for adolescent girls and boys); (2) contraception and pregnancy (only for adolescent girls); and (3) impregnation (only for adolescent boys). Comparing the above-mentioned variables in the NLLFS and NSFG Cycle 6 samples revealed that the NLLFS adolescent girls and boys were significantly older than their gender-matched peers in the NSFG wereat the timeof theirfirstheterosexualcontact. Inaddition, the NLLFS adolescent girls were significantly more likely to have had sexual contact with other girls and, among girls who were heterosexually active, the NLLFS girls were significantly more likely to have used emergency contraception and less likely to have used other forms of contraception than NSFG girls. The NLLFS adolescent boys were significantly less likely to have been heterosexuallyactive by the age of 17 than the NSFGCycle 6 boys, but no more likely to have engaged in same-sex sexual contact (see Table 1). In March 2011, the results of the NSFG Cycle 7 data collection (2006–2008) were released by the National Center for Health Statistics, with a public report that twice as many women reported same-sex contact in their lifetimes as men (Chandra, Mosher,Copen,&Sionean,2011).Because theCycle7datacollection corresponded more closely with the time that we were collecting the data on the NLLFS adolescents (2006-2009), we thought it would be interesting to repeat the comparative analyses we conducted for our article, using the 2006-2008 NSFG ACASI data with permission of the National Center for Health Statistics (G. Martinez, personal communication, August 1, 2011; U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, 2010, 2011). Using the same selection criteria and statistical analyses that we used for our article, the 17-year-old adolescents in the NSFG Cycle7wereselected, consistingof237girlsand267boys.Comparative analyses revealed that the findings for the 17-year-old NLLFS and NSFG boys were, with one exception, the same using the 2002 NSFG Cycle 6 as the 2006-2008 Cycle 7 data. The NLLFS boys were older than the NSFG boys at first heterosexual contact was significant when the comparison was based on the 6th but not the 7th cycle data. For the 17-year-old girls, comparisons between the NLLFS and NSFG 2006–2008 data revealed no significant differences in same-sex behavior or the use of emergency contraception, whereas there were N. K. Gartrell (&) N. G. Goldberg The Williams Institute, UCLA School of Law, Los Angeles, CA, USA