Elements of Minority Stress and Resilience in LGBTQ+ Students’ Experience of Education

Figures & data

Table 1. Individual descriptive characteristics (N = 27).

	n
Overall	27
Sexual orientation
Gay	12
Lesbian	7
Bisexual	7
Heterosexual	1
Gender
Cisgender men	13
Cisgender women	9
Non-binary persons	2
Transgender women	2
Questioning	1
Age
Under 25	6
25–35	10
Over 35	11

Table 2. Coding framework.

Themes	Categories	Codes	Examples
Minority stress	Distal	violence and discrimination hatred and prejudice normativity and invisibility	“/ … / I know that no matter how you whine, cry, they are just going to keep doing it. And a [person’s name] hit me like that once. A huge slap on the back. That hurt me so much. And I just did that [exhales barely audible]. I just did that. You know how I was screaming inside.”^a
	Proximal	expectations of rejection concealment internalized stigma	“But you know, I am much more careful about who I talk to and when. In which cases I should be open, if at all. Because you never know what a person’s intentions are. This insecurity will always remain with me.”
Resilience	Individual-based resilience	knowledge personal characteristics hope for the future	“But thank god, by that time I knew some basic things. I knew what homophobia was, what transphobia meant. How to react to it.”
	Community-based resilience	friends school personnel family school climate LGBTQ+ organizations	“The positive experience was that I was fortunate to have a class behind me that stood by me through thick and thin. They stood up for me. However, I do not recall the school offering me anything on LGBTQ+ issues that made me feel better represented or safer.

^aExamples are meant for the first bullet point in the list of codes in each category.