Psychosocial obstacles to smoking cessation attempts among young sexual minority women

Background: Sexual minority women (SMW; i.e., women who identify their sexuality as lesbian, bisexual, or something other (e.g., queer) than heterosexual) report greater smoking behaviors than their heterosexual counterparts across all ages.  This smoking disparity may be attributable in part to a sexuality-related stressors (e.g., internalized homophobia) and lower coping resources (e.g., emotional regulation, diminished social support).

Methods: Using data from a cross-sectional web-survey of young SMW who smoke (N=323; ages 18-24), we conducted a multivariate logistic regression to examine the relationship between SMW’s quit attempts in the prior year and sociodemographic characteristics (i.e., race/ethnicity, sexual identity, age, urbanicity), general (i.e., daily hassles) and sexuality-specific stressors (i.e., internalized homophobia), and coping resources (i.e., emotional regulation and social support).

Results: Over 45% of smokers in the sample reported attempting to quit smoking in the prior year. Bisexual (OR=1.98) women were more likely to have attempted to quit than lesbian counterparts. Women with greater emotional regulation difficulties (OR=2.17) were more likely to report a quit attempt in the prior year. Conversely, women who were younger (OR=.86) and reported greater internalized homophobia (OR=.44) were less likely to report a quit attempt in the prior year. We found no other statistical associations at p<.05.

Conclusions: Based on these findings, we underscore the need to examine and address the sexuality-specific risk correlates acting as barriers in SMW’s quit attempts and propose cessation intervention recommendations for young SMW.