(PS8-51) Geosocial Networking App Use and Queer Asian American Men’s Sexual Risk Behavior: Sexual Racism and Internalized Racism as Serial Mediators

Research has demonstrated that a large number of queer Asian American men use geosocial networking platforms for casual sex seeking, which is associated with increased sexual risk behavior. Sexual racism has been found to increase unsafe sexual practices and may help explain the aforementioned association. While sexual racism has been investigated more frequently in studies related to queer men of color’s health, research has neglected to focus on one of racism’s most vicious consequences - internalized racism - and has often ignored the unique experiences of queer Asian American men by homogenizing them in larger samples that consist of queer men of different races. Based on the literature, little is known about the association between sexual racism and internalized racism and their roles in mediating the association between geosocial networking app use and sexual risk behavior among queer Asian American men, which the present study hopes to examine.  

To address this pressing public health concern, we propose a serial mediation model to examine 1) the extent to which geosocial networking (GSN) app use is associated with engagement in queer Asian American men’s sexual risk behavior, and 2) the extent to which experiences of sexual racism and internalized racism mediate this association. 

Data will be collected through a Qualtrics survey consisting of validated survey measures from 200 queer Asian American male participants. Participants will be recruited through paid advertising on sex and dating apps for gay and bisexual men, as well as email lists for Asian American cultural and LGBTQ university organizations. We will run a serial mediation analysis to test whether geosocial networking app use is associated with sexual racism, which is then associated with internalized racism and subsequently sexual risk behavior. Geosocial networking app use will be measured using the adaptation of the Facebook Intensity Scale (Ellison et al., 2007) derived from Chan (2017). Experiences of sexual racism will be measured using the Experienced Sexual Racism Items (Bhambhani et al., 2020) derived from the Han et al. (2015) Sexual Racism Scale, and internalized racism will be measured using the Internalized Racism in Asian Americans Scale (IRAAS; Choi et al., 2017). Lastly, sexual risk behavior will be measured using the adapted version of the Sexual Risk Survey (Rood et al., 2018) derived from Yamasaki and Le (2022).  

This study’s findings will provide a comprehensive model that will aid practitioners and researchers in creating culturally-congruent and media-related interventions that specifically target an understudied yet insidious form of racism–internalized racism–among queer Asian American men who struggle with sexual risk behavior.