Attitudes Toward Lesbians and Gays Among American and Dutch Adolescents

Abstract

Attitudes toward lesbians and gays vary across national populations, and previous research has found relatively more accepting attitudes in the Netherlands as compared to the U.S. In this study, we compared beliefs about and attitudes toward lesbians and gays in samples of Dutch and American heterosexual adolescents, utilizing survey data from 1,080 American adolescents (mean age = 15.86 years) attending two schools and from 1,391 Dutch adolescents (mean age = 16.27 years) attending eight schools. Findings indicated the Dutch participants were more tolerant of lesbians and gays, after adjusting for the gender, age, and racial/ethnic minority status of the participants. However, between-country differences were attenuated by accounting for the beliefs about lesbians and gays that participants used to justify their attitudes. American participants were more likely to justify their attitudes using beliefs related to social norms and religious opposition, while the Dutch participants were more likely to justify their attitudes using beliefs related to individual rights and the biological/genetic basis of homosexuality. The results suggest that the relative importance of particular beliefs about lesbians and gays to attitudes at the group level may be context-dependent but also that certain beliefs are salient to attitudes across national contexts.

Measurement of attitudes towards homosexuality: testing measurement invariance across European countries

“…The example of Israel and Poland shows that countries with similar levels of the approval measure may differ greatly in the support for LGBT rights. Measurement invariance of a latent variable measured with multiple items is usually assessed using CFA models (Davidov et al 2014;van de Schoot et al 2013). Before 2016, however, there was only one statement regarding attitudes towards homosexuality in the ESS questionnaire.…”

Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity‐Based Prejudice

“…In a crossnational study that included youth in the United States and the Netherlands, individuals’ reasoning was related significantly to their judgments about the acceptability of homosexuality (Collier, Horn, Bos, & Sandfort, ). Individuals who reasoned more about social norms and religious opposition evaluated homosexuality as wrong or completely wrong.…”

Thuisloze LHBT’s: een onzichtbare en dubbele risicogroep. Pleidooi voor onderzoek naar thuisloze lesbische, homo-, bi- en transgenderjongeren

“…Nederlandse jongeren zijn toleranter ten aanzien van lesbische-en homojongeren dan hun leeftijdsgenoten uit de Verenigde Staten (Collier, Hornb, Bos, & Sandfort, 2015). Toch ligt ook de acceptatie van homoseksualiteit moeilijk onder Nederlandse jongeren (Keuzenkamp & Kuyper, Thuisloze LHBT's: een onzichtbare en dubbele risicogroep 2013; Kuyper, 2015;De Roos, Kuyper, & Iedema, 2014) en religieuze en etnische minderheidsgroepen (Collier, Bos, Merry, & Sandfort, 2014;Huijnk, 2014;De Roos et al, 2014).…”