Massachusetts State Youth Risk Behavior Survey (1999)

Center for Disease Control and Mass. Dept. of Education
Jun 01, 2000

Who’s in it?
The 1999 MYRBS was administered from February to June 1999 in randomly selected public high schools across the state. In each participating school, three to five classes were randomly selected to participate. A total of 4,415 students completed the survey (79% of the students enrolled in the classes originally selected). Students who identified themselves as gay, lesbian, bisexual and/or reported any same-sex sexual contact comprised 5.5% of students participating in the survey. Of those students with any history of sexual experience, 9.4% were sexual minority youth (those who identified as gay, lesbian, bisexual and/or had a history of same-sex sexual contact).

What did they say?
Sexual minority students reported substantially higher rates of school-related violence than their peers.

• Sexual minority students were more than twice as likely to report being in a physical fight at school in the prior year (31.5% of sexual minority students vs. 12.9% of others).
  
• Sexual minority students were more than three times likely to report having carried a weapon to school in the past month (21.5% of sexual minority students vs. 6.5% of others).
  
• Sexual minority students were three times likelier to report having been threatened or injured with a weapon at school in the past year (23.5% of sexual minority students vs. 7.8% of others).
  
• Sexual minority students more often reported that they had missed school in the past month because they felt unsafe (19.1% of sexual minority students vs. 5.6% of others).

Caution!
Because of their sampling, results from this study are representative of Massachusetts youth as a whole. However, the results are not generalizable to the rest of the country.

Where can I find out more?
The full MYRBS report is available on-line:
http://www.doe.mass.edu/hssss/