Differentiating disclosure and concealment in measurement of outness for sexual minorities: The Nebraska Outness Scale.

Abstract

Research on lesbian, gay, and bisexual (LGB) individuals has long examined outness, or openness about one's sexual orientation, as an important predictor of health and well-being. The authors reconceptualized outness as a composite of two related but independent constructs: disclosure and concealment of sexual orientation. This conceptualization guided creation of the Nebraska Outness Scale (NOS), a 10-item measure with a concealment (NOS-C) and disclosure (NOS-D) subscale. The scale and subscales showed good internal reliability, discriminant, convergent, and predictive validity. As hypothesized, concealment showed a stronger relationship to mental health and well-being constructs than disclosure. Disclosure, but not concealment, also differed across sexual orientations with bisexual individuals reporting less disclosure and mostly gay/lesbian and gay/ lesbian individuals reporting successively higher levels. The authors conclude that concealment and disclosure are separate constructs and that concealment may be more relevant to minority stress processes among LGB individuals and may provide a more comparable measure across sexual orientation categories. Further research is needed to validate the scale and to examine the role that outness plays in minority stress among LGB individuals.

Stress and Relationship Functioning in Same‐Sex Couples: The Vulnerabilities of Internalized Homophobia and Outness

“…Outness has been shown to be associated with psychological well-being as well as receipt of social support (Lewis, Derlega, Berndt, Morris, & Rose, 2001;Meidlinger & Hope, 2014). For example, greater outness is correlated with lower psychological distress (Morris, Waldo, & Rothblum, 2001) and with greater positive affect, social support, and quality of life (Meidlinger & Hope, 2014).…”

“…Individuals who are less out may perceive less support (Meidlinger & Hope, 2014), which explains why low levels of outness may be considered a vulnerability. In contrast to our findings for actor stress, however, we found no evidence that an individual's internalized homophobia served as an enduring vulnerability to his or her partner's stressful day.…”

Development and Initial Validation of the Sexual Minority Women Rejection Sensitivity Scale

“…An overall score was computed by averaging the responses across the 11 items (a ¼ .90). This measure has demonstrated high interitem reliability predominantly among educated, European American samples of sexual minorities (a ¼ .79-.95; Balsam, Beauchaine, Rothblum, & Solomon, 2008;Balsam & Szymanski, 2005;Lewis et al, 2005;Meidlinger & Hope, 2014;Mohr & Fassinger, 2003;Todosijevic, Rothblum, & Solomon, 2005). It has also demonstrated negative associations with discomfort with disclosure and need for privacy regarding sexual orientation as well as positive associations with single item measures of disclosure of sexual orientation (Mohr & Fassinger, 2000.…”

Self‐disclosure to peers by young adult cancer survivors

“…Given the lack of standardized measures assessing cancer self‐disclosure, a validated scale used to measure self‐disclosure of sexual orientation was adapted for this study. The Nebraska Outness Scale (NOS) contains a five‐item self‐disclosure subscale asking participants to estimate the percentage of people in different social groups (including friends/acquaintances) who are aware that they are lesbian, gay, or bisexual. This measure also contains a five‐item concealment subscale asking participants how frequently they avoid talking about topics related to sexual orientation with members of each of these five groups.…”

“…A total “outness” score is created by reverse scoring items on the concealment subscale and calculating a mean of all items. The full scale has a reliability of 0.89 and internal consistency from 0.87 to 0.92. The NOS was adapted for this study by replacing the words “your sexual orientation” with “your cancer” or “you were diagnosed with cancer”; internal consistency of the adapted scale was 0.76.…”