Prevalence of Sexual Minority Adolescents Worldwide: A Systematic Review

Abstract

Health research documenting sexual minority adolescents exists predominately in North American literature. However, sexual minority youth exist elsewhere in the world. This study aims to provide estimates of sexual minority adolescent populations worldwide. In this systematic review, we searched Medline, Embase, CAB direct, Sociology Collection, CINAHL, Academic Search Complete, LGBT Life, Bibliography of Native American Studies, Bibliography of Asian Studies, ERIC, and PsycINFO between 2008 and 2022. We included peer-reviewed publications that focused on youth and sexual orientation or youth and sexual behavior—youth in this study were people who were between 10 and 19 years of age. Examples of publications that were excluded from our study were qualitative studies, mixed-method studies, and interventions. Publications obtained from the search results underwent a country screen, a title and abstract screen, and a methods screen, before moving onto a full-text screen. We extracted the prevalence of sexual minority youth after full-text screening. We identified 42,711 results from searching the electronic databases and an additional 105 records via hand searching. After duplicates were removed, 32,213 articles were screened and 41 studies were eligible for this review. We found estimates of sexual minority adolescents in 47 countries, with at least one estimate for each World Health Organization region. The development of inclusive laws and policies is needed on a global basis to decrease health disparities in a community of people who are at higher risk of adverse health outcomes.