revealed gender gaps in mathematics achievement and teacher perceptions. However, recent evidence suggests that gender gaps have closed on state tests, raising the question of whether such gaps are absent in the ECLS-K:2011 cohort. Extending earlier analyses, this study compares the two ECLS-K cohorts, exploring gaps throughout the achievement distribution and examining whether learning behaviors might differentially explain gaps more at the bottom than the top of the distribution. Overall, this study reveals remarkable consistency across both ECLS-K cohorts, with the gender gap developing early among high achievers and spreading quickly throughout the distribution. Teachers consistently rate girls' mathematical proficiency lower than that of boys with similar achievement and learning behaviors. Gender differences in learning approaches appear to be fairly consistent across the achievement distribution, but girls' more studious approaches appear to have more payoff at the bottom of the distribution than at the top. Questions remain regarding why boys outperform girls at the top of the distribution, and several hypotheses are discussed. Overall, the persistent ECLS-K patterns make clear that girls' early mathematics learning experiences merit further attention.

Objectives. To determine how sensitive estimates of lesbian, gay, bisexual, or questioning (LGBQ)–heterosexual youth health disparities are to the presence of potentially mischievous responders. Methods. We used US data from the 2015 Youth Risk Behavior Survey, pooled across jurisdictions that included a question about sexual identity for a total sample of 148 960 students. We used boosted regressions (a machine-learning technique) to identify unusual patterns of responses to 7 screener items presumably unrelated to LGBQ identification, which generated an index of suspected mischievousness. We estimated LGBQ–heterosexual youth disparities on 20 health outcomes; then we removed 1% of suspected mischievous responders at a time and re-estimated disparities to assess the robustness of original estimates. Results. Accounting for suspected mischievousness reduced estimates of the average LGBQ–heterosexual youth health disparity by up to 46% for boys and 23% for girls; however, screening did not affect all outcomes equally. Drug- and alcohol-related disparities were most affected, particularly among boys, but bullying and suicidal ideation were unaffected. Conclusions. Including screener items in public health data sets and performing rigorous sensitivity analyses can support the validity of youth health estimates.

Although numerous survey-based studies have found that students who identify as lesbian, gay, bisexual, or questioning (LGBQ) have elevated risk for many negative academic, disciplinary, psychological, and health outcomes, the validity of the types of data on which these results rest have come under increased scrutiny. Over the past several years, a variety of data-validity screening techniques have been used in attempts to scrub data sets of “mischievous responders,” youth who systematically provide extreme and untrue responses to outcome items and who tend to falsely report being LGBQ. We conducted a preregistered replication of Cimpian et al. with the 2017 Youth Risk Behavior Survey to (1) estimate new LGBQ-heterosexual disparities on 20 outcomes; (2) test a broader, mechanistic theory relating mischievousness effects with a feature of items (i.e., item response-option extremity); and (3) compare four techniques used to address mischievous responders. Our results are consistent with Cimpian et al.’s findings that potentially mischievous responders inflate LGBQ-heterosexual disparities, do so more among boys than girls, and affect outcomes differentially. For example, we find that removing students suspected of being mischievous responders can cut male LGBQ-heterosexual disparities in half overall and can completely or mostly eliminate disparities in outcomes including fighting at school, driving drunk, and using cocaine, heroin, and ecstasy. Methodologically, we find that some methods are better than others at addressing the issue of data integrity, with boosted regressions coupled with data removal leading to potentially very large decreases in the estimates of LGBQ-heterosexual disparities, but regression adjustment having almost no effect. While the empirical focus of this article is on LGBQ youth, the issues discussed are relevant to research on other minority groups and youth generally, and speak to survey development, methodology, and the robustness and transparency of research.

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