During this wave, participants self-reported their sexual orientation on a survey and had their height measured by a trained interviewer. The data for this analysis came from the fourth wave of data collection, which occurred when participants were 28.4 years old on average. At the beginning of the study, participants were 15.5 years old on average. These data were collected in several waves between 19. This time, they examined data from 14,786 participants who took part in the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health (also known as Add Health). In it, the same group of researchers successfully replicated their height finding in a nationally representative sample of U.S. Because all participants were either college students or attendees at an LGBT pride event, some concern was raised about how reliable the findings might be.Ī new study that just appeared in the Archives of Sexual Behavior would appear to put this concern to rest.
This study had an important limitation, though, in that it wasn’t based on nationally representative data. Earlier this year, a study published in the Journal of Sex Research reported that gay men, on average, tend to be shorter than their heterosexual counterparts (click here to read a summary of the findings).
