Experiences of Everyday Discrimination by Sexual Orientation in a Large National Cohort of Female Nurses

While discrimination has been studied among sexual minorities (SM), researchers have called for several necessary innovations, including adopting standard measures of discrimination and identifying attributions of such mistreatment among sexual minorities. We used data from the Nurses’ Health Study 2 (n = 69,483)—a longitudinal cohort of female nurses across the U.S. Experiences of discrimination were measured in 2017 using the Everyday Discrimination Scale (EDS) and coded using three schemes: situation, frequency, and chronicity. Participants attributed discriminatory experiences to any of 12 identities. We fit unadjusted quasi-Poisson models to estimate relative expected counts (RECs) for the association of sexual orientation with everyday discrimination and number of attributions, and unadjusted log-binomial models to estimate prevalence ratios (PRs) for specific attributions. Compared to participants who identified as completely heterosexual, all SM subgroups reported a higher number of situations and frequency of discrimination. Using chronicity coding, heterosexual with past same-sex attractions/partners/SM identity (REC:1.39, 95%CI:1.28–1.50), mostly heterosexual (REC:1.48, 95%CI:1.30–1.68), and bisexual (REC:1.57, 95%CI:1.13–2.11), but not lesbian (REC:1.00, 95%CI:0.78–1.26) participants reported more events of discriminatory experiences. All SM subgroups reported a greater number of attributions. Future research should use the EDS as a potential mediator in analyses of sexual orientation-related health disparities.