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The purpose of this study is to highlight the experiences and issues of an overlooked demographic: older LGBTQ + adults in the US, in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic. This allows the authors to explore possible changes in policy and practice regarding the management of the pandemic with attention to elderly LGBTQ.

Building on the authors’ experience in disaster research and a study of older LGBTQ + adults in the San Francisco Bay Area, the authors analyze key trends in COVID-19 pandemic management while drawing lessons from the AIDS epidemic.

The authors have found that LGBTQ + people, especially older and transgender individuals, have unique experiences with hazards and public safety and healthcare professionals and organizations (e.g. heteronormative care, traumatic insensitivity, deprioritizing essential treatments as elective). Second, older LGBTQ + adults' perceptions of state responses to pandemics were heavily influenced by experiences with the HIV/AIDS pandemic. And third, experiences with the COVID-19 pandemic have important implications for preventing, responding to and recovering from future epidemics/pandemics.

The authors point to two parallel implications of this work. The first entails novel approaches to queering disaster prevention, response and recovery. And the second is to connect the management of the COVID-19 pandemic to the principles of harm reduction developed by grassroots organizations to suggest new ways to think about contagion and organize physical distancing, while still socializing to take care of people’s physical and mental health, especially the more marginalized like elderly LGBTQ + people.

Health disparities affecting lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer (LGBTQ) populations have been reported in many countries. For Singapore, no large quantitative studies on mental health and well-being in the local LGBTQ community have been published. The authors conducted a community-based survey (National LGBT Census Singapore, 2013; NLCS2013) that covered a comprehensive set of demographic, social and health indicators. Here, the authors investigated mental health status and its correlates in 2,350 LGBTQ individuals within the NLCS2013 sample.

The NLCS2013 was an anonymous online survey conducted amongst self-identified LGBTQ adults (aged ≥ 21 years) residing in Singapore. The survey included the World Health Organisation Well-being Index (WHO-5) as a measure of mental well-being, with low WHO 5 scores (<13/25) indicating poor mental well-being. The authors analysed relationships between low WHO-5 score and a range of respondent characteristics using multivariate logistic regression.

Strikingly, 40.9% of 2,350 respondents analysed had low WHO-5 scores, indicating poor mental well-being. Parental non-acceptance, experience of conflict at home and bullying/discrimination in the workplace or educational environments were all significantly associated with poor mental well-being. Conversely, community participation appeared protective for mental well-being, as respondents who participated in LGBTQ community organisations or events were less likely to have poor mental well-being than non-participants.

The NLCS2013 represents one of the first broad-based efforts to comprehensively and quantitatively capture the sociodemographic and health profile, including mental health status, within Singapore’s resident LGBTQ population. These findings affirm the need to address the mental health needs of LGBTQ individuals in Singapore and to foster safe spaces and allyship.

This paper aims to examine the use of coproduction to create a film “Do You See Me?”, to amplify the voices of a “hard to reach” group: older lesbian, gay, bisexual (LGB) victim-survivors of domestic abuse (DA).

Qualitative methods were used as part of the co-production, which included two practitioner focus groups and 14 narrative interviews with lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer or questioning persons or the community (LGBTQ+) victim-survivors.

Despite differences in gender, sexualities, roles and “lived experiences” across stakeholders, there was a shared aim to ensure victim-survivors had a sense of ownership in this endeavour. Consequently, a positive reciprocity existed that helped to foster effective communication, allow for capacity building and subsequent knowledge exchange. The collaboration produced a nuanced meta-narrative making visible the “lived experiences” of LGB victim-survivors’ perceptions of perpetrator behaviours.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this paper is original in two ways, firstly, providing insights into the “lived experiences” of an invisible group; older LGBTQ+ victim-survivors, and secondly, in involving them in the co-production of a film. The paper aims to reveal how interdependencies that developed between stakeholders helped to disrupt understandings, develop new ways of knowing and build levels of trust. Group interactions helped to dismantle hierarchies, so those with experiential knowledge: the survivors, had greater control throughout the research process. The paper is significant in providing a critical reflection on the ethical, methodological and resource challenges involved in co-production. It also makes recommendations for researchers and funders about the value of using co-production as a method to engage with hard-to-reach groups.

Social justice themes permeate the social studies, history, civics, and current events curricula. The purpose of this paper is to examine how non-fiction trade books represented lesbian, gay, bisexual, transsexual, transgender, and queer (LGBTQ) individuals and issues.

Trade books published after 2000 and intended for middle grades (5-8) and high school (9-12) students were analyzed.

Findings included main characters’ demography, sexuality, and various ancillary elements, such as connection to LGBTQ community, interactions with non-LGBTQ individuals, the challenges and contested terrain that LGBTQ individuals must traverse, and a range of responses to these challenges. Publication date, intended audience, and subgenre of non-fiction – specifically, memoir, expository, and historical text – added nuance to findings. Viewed broadly, the books generally engaged in exceptionalism, a historical misrepresentation, of one singular character who was a gay or lesbian white American. Diverse sexualities, races, ethnicities, and contexts were largely absent. Complex resistance structures were frequent and detailed.

This research contributes to previous scholarship exploring LGBTQ-themed fiction for secondary students and close readings of secondary level non-fiction trade books.

The authors aimed to identify the nature of customer harassment against lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer (LGBTQ) workers.

The authors analyzed data from in-depth interviews with 30 LGBTQ service workers in the United States who had recently experienced customer harassment.

Among various forms of customer harassment LGBTQ workers reported, some showed commonalities with previously reported cases of race-based and gender-based customer harassment. However, other cases highlighted unique aspects of LGBTQ-based customer harassment—customers morally condemned their LGBTQ identities, refused their service while displaying emotional disgust, and made sexual advances while imposing sexual stereotypes and fantasies about LGBTQ people. Experiences of customer harassment varied across subgroups of workers who had specific sexual and gender identities, and LGBTQ workers of color were harassed for their LGBTQ and racial identities simultaneously.

Past research on group-based customer harassment has focused on incidents against straight, cisgender women and workers of workers of color, but the present study identified the nature of customer harassment that targeted workers' LGBTQ status.

Lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer/questioning (LGBTQ+) individuals' health information seeking is an important topic across multiple disciplines and areas. The aim of this systematic review is to create a holistic view of sexual and gender minority individuals' health information seeking reported in multidisciplinary studies, with regard to the types of health information LGBTQ+ individuals sought and information sources they used, as well as the factors influencing their health information seeking behavior.

The review is based on the literature search in 10 major academic databases. A set of inclusion and exclusion criteria was applied to identify studies that provide evidence on LGBTQ+ individuals' health information seeking behavior. The studies were first screened by title and abstract to determine whether they met the inclusion criteria. The full texts of each relevant study were obtained to confirm whether the exclusion criteria were met. The reference lists of the included studies were manually scanned. The relevant information was then extracted from selected articles and analyzed using thematic content analysis.

A seed set of 3,122 articles published between 1997 and 2020 was evaluated, and 46 total articles were considered for further analysis. The review results show that two major categories of health information sought by LGBTQ+ individuals were sexual and nonsexual, which were further classified into 17 specific types. In terms of health information sources, researchers have reported that online resources, interpersonal sources and traditional media were frequently used. Moreover, 25 factors affecting LGBTQ+ individuals' health information seeking were identified from the literature.

Through evidence-based understanding, this review preliminarily bridged the knowledge gap in understanding the status quo of studies on LGBTQ+ individuals' health information seeking and proposed the potential research directions that information science researchers could contribute to this important area.

Treatment of intersectionality in empirical studies has predominantly engaged with individual categories of difference. The purpose of this paper is to demonstrate that there is utility in exploring intersectionality at the intersection of individual and institutional levels. As such the authors move beyond the polarised take on intersections as either individual or institutional phenomenon and tackle intersectionality as a relational phenomenon that gains meaning at the encounter of individuals and institutions in context. Therefore, the authors explicate how intersectionality features as forms of solidarity and hostility in work environments. As such the authors posit that not only individuals but also the institutions should change if inclusion is aimed at societal and organisational levels.

A thematic analysis on qualitative interview data of a purposive- and snowball-selected sample of 11 lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer working adults in Turkey was used.

This paper finds evidence to support the existence of a multidimensional model of intersectionality, where conflicting and complementary individual and institutional intersections create four intersectional typologies in the form of intersectional hostility, intersectional struggle, intersectional adjustment and intersectional solidarity.

The extant literature offers rich insights into individual intersectionality but sheds very little light on institutional intersectionality and its interaction with individual intersectionality. This paper attempts to fill in this gap by investigating intersectional encounters as interactions between the individual and institutional intersections.

Much research has focused on the negative aspects of disclosing sexual orientation and/or gender identity in the workplace but less has explicitly examined the positive aspects. This lack of research is problematic as this can oversimplify the work lives of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender or queer (LGBTQ) people. The current study examines positive intrapersonal, interpersonal and work opportunity experiences associated with coming out in the workplace as LGBTQ.

The current study surveyed 135 working adults who identified as LGBTQ and used a mixed qualitative and quantitative design to examine the relationship between disclosure and various positive workplace experiences.

Results suggest that sexual orientation disclosure at work was related to participants perceiving multiple positive interpersonal as well as work opportunity experiences. Furthermore, results suggest gender identity disclosure was similar to, but not the same as, sexual orientation disclosure in terms of perception of positive experiences.

Previous research on disclosure at work has taken a somewhat narrow and typically quantitative approach. The current study provides more nuance to the phenomenon by broadly examining multiple positive experiences associated with disclosure and studying them qualitatively in order to best understand participants' experiences in their own voices.

The purpose of this study is to identify LGBTQ+ perceptions of and experiences with hazards, vulnerabilities and disasters in the San Francisco Bay Area in the USA and to co-develop applied projects to “queer” disaster knowledge production and risk reduction activities in the region.

This is a community science project in which we collaborate with community members to enhance both community and scientific knowledge with the goal of utilizing it to produce a positive change to pressing social issues and their underlying causes. We do this through a series of four focus group workshops to identify community priorities, hazards, vulnerabilities and local action. We follow this with further ethnographic research and projects to apply findings from phase one.

The authors have found that: LGBTQ+ people in the Bay Area have unique experiences with hazards, vulnerabilities and disasters; there are significant gaps in the representation of LGBTQ+ hazard exposure in local scientific models that we can address through alternative methodologies; and tabletop exercises, learning modules and podcasts help orient and train disaster response agencies and personnel on LGBTQ+ inclusive operations.

This initiative entails novel approaches to community science for disaster risk reduction and creative collaboration with community-based organizations to foster the development of LGBTQ+ inclusive disaster risk reduction and response.

Discriminatory abuse has been a distinct category of abuse in safeguarding adults policy since 2000, but it is rarely used in practice, according to recent official statistics. As part of a larger project, the authors undertook a literature review to clarify the concept, explore reasons for low reporting and consider recommendations for practice. The purpose of this paper is to present the findings of this literature review.

This literature review comprises 35 sources, which were identified using three academic databases, reference harvesting and sector-specific websites. Findings were developed through thematic analysis of the data.

The literature review demonstrates that definitions of discriminatory abuse stretch from an interpersonal emphasis in policy documents to a more structural approach. There are open questions about the status of discriminatory abuse as a category of abuse due to the complicated interface between discriminatory motivations and the abusive acts through which they are experienced. A range of factors can obscure its identification, particularly the hidden, stigmatised and normalised nature of discriminatory abuse. Some recommendations for practice are identified, but more work is needed to develop the practice vocabulary and required skills.

This study brings together existing research on discriminatory abuse to argue that it is time to revive this understanding of abuse and develop safeguarding practice with adults who have protected characteristics.