The National Crime Victimization Survey (NCVS) collects information on nonfatal personal and property crimes both reported and not reported to police. As part of the ongoing redesign efforts for the NCVS, the Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS) added sexual orientation and gender identity (SOGI) questions to the survey's demographic section in July 2016. The inclusion of these measures will provide important national-level estimates of victimization among lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) people and allow researchers to understand victimization risk and access to victim services. This article includes a discussion of the sexual orientation and gender identity measures that were added to the NCVS, and findings from the monitoring activities conducted during the first six months of data collection. In addition, population counts by sexual orientation and gender identity are estimated using July through December 2016 NCVS data.

Although numerous studies have shown that discrimination contributes to poorer mental health, the precise mechanisms underlying this association are not well understood. In this paper, we consider the possibility that the association between day-today discrimination (being disrespected, insulted, and harassed) and depressive symptoms is partially mediated by religious struggles (religious doubts and negative religious coping). To test our mediation model, we use data collected from the 2011 Miami-Dade Health Survey (n = 444) to estimate a series of multiple regression models assessing associations among day-today discrimination, religious struggles, and depressive symptoms. We find that day-today discrimination is positively associated with religious struggles and depressive symptoms, net of adjustments for general religious involvement, age, gender, race, ethnicity, immigrant status, interview language, education, employment, household income, financial strain, and marital status. We also observe that religious struggles are positively associated with depressive symptoms. Our mediation analyses confirm that day-today discrimination can contribute to depressive symptoms by stirring religious struggles. Our key finding is that religious struggles may serve as a maladaptive coping response to discrimination. Our analyses extend previous work by bridging research in the areas of discrimination, religious struggles, and mental health.

Studies of the association between religious attendance and body mass have yielded mixed results. In this paper, we consider intersectional variations by race and gender to advance our understanding of these inconsistencies. We use data from the 2006-2008 Health and Retirement Study to examine the association between religious attendance and three indicators of body mass: overall body mass index, waist circumference, and waist-to-height ratio (n = 11,457). For White women, attendance is either protective or unrelated to body mass. For Black women, attendance is consistently associated with increased body mass. We find that religious attendance is not associated with body mass among the men.

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Previous research has suggested that sexual minorities may have higher rates of migration than heterosexuals, indicating their effort to escape stigma in the currently residing areas. However, direct evidence for the migration pattern has been lacking, and mental health implications of such coping effort have been unclear. This study seeks to fill these gaps in the literature by analyzing the Add Health data, which include longitudinal measures of residential locations, sexual orientation, and mental health. The analysis focuses on the transition to adulthood, when the rate of internal migration peaks. Among women, sexual minorities have a higher rate of migration than heterosexuals, but men do not show such a difference. Sexual minorities show better mental health when they migrate to counties with higher proportions of people living in urban areas whereas heterosexuals do not show such an association. Among sexual minority men, migration to counties with higher population density and higher proportions of college-educated residents is also linked to better mental health.