Rural LGBTQIA+ Youth: A Review of the Literature (2015–2025)

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Thank you for the opportunity to review this manuscript. I think it is a good manuscript and will make an important contribution to the literature. Below I make some suggestions for improvement:

Introduction

This section is good, but I think it could be shortened. It feels like it pre-emptively jumps into the actual review of the literature. I think that is most apparent from lines 62-85.

The LGBTQIA+ Identity section is comprehensive, but I think it is too comprehensive. I don’t think the authors need to include a history of queer and trans terminology. The Rurality and Youth sections are much more succinct.

Methods

How many articles did the original search yield? What was the inclusion and exclusion criteria? Any concerns about the quality of articles?

Results

The results section is quite good. It does a good job of summarizing the literature. The themes that emerged make sense.

I’m not sure what is meant by “culturally responsive” services in this context.

If possible, I think it would be helpful to highlight some of the other demographic characteristics of participants in these studies. For example, did any of the studies pull out experiences of racialized LGBTQIA+ youth in rural areas?

Discussion

This section is good; however, it does feel like the bulk of the section (lines 479-536) is a summary of the findings rather than an analysis of the findings. I think the authors could compare their findings with the broader literature on LGBTQIA+ youth and youth who live in rural areas. Are there any differences and similarities?

Author Response

Reviewer 2 Report

Thank you for the opportunity to review this manuscript, which discusses the increasing rise of literature that addresses the experiences of rural LGBTQIA+ youth. I believe that this paper can have much to contribute to future research and practice. This being said, I do have some comments that I hope will assist you in further strengthening your article.

• Introduction
  • You describe the rising identification with LGBTQIA+ identities, but then move onto say that rural areas have lagged in their acceptance of these identities. I would encourage you to expand on this argument more and offer citational evidence to further establish the justification for the work.
  • Also, the reason for your RQs is not concretely justified when you introduce them—why is it important to look at the time of youth? Why look at the current political climate?
  • I appreciate that you discuss the current sociopolitical landscape. Your grounding in the current anti-LGBTQ+ legislation is timely and important to highlight. What would make this even stronger is to articulate how rural communities have been at danger because of these sociopolitical shifts.
  • As you articulate that the deficit perspectives can harm people, it would be useful to give examples of how.
• Terminology
  • Although I appreciated the history on LGBTQIA+ identities, if you are looking to cut, I don’t think that the history on identities was crucial to the argument.
  • Moreover, as you discuss the evolution of terminology, I would encourage you to briefly acknowledge that the relationship to these terms has been different for those with multiple minoritized identities.
• Materials and Methods
  • I was interested in the lack of using ‘queer and trans’ as key terms given the shift in language. Can you offer your perspective of this?
  • Also, you need more information about the search process. How many articles did the searches yield? How many duplicates? How did you get to 25?
  • Related to this point, I was curious about how you ‘prioritized research from the U.S. South.’ This doesn’t sound methodologically congruent so as a reader, I would appreciate more context about this.
  • How did you ensure consistency across team members in your analysis? How did you build trustworthiness in the study.
  • I also valued you being forthcoming about the usage of AI. What would be useful is to understand how you double checked the work of the AI.
• Results
  • Your first theme does not actually seem like it’s answering any of your research questions, but rather, it seems like it is an interesting finding beyond the context of the study. I would encourage you to cut the theme or make it clearer how it is answering the research questions.
  • When you talk about the four key factors that signal a supportive community, are these four factors specifically from the Paceley et al. article or is it your own heuristic?
  • Some of your results are descriptive and not interpretive. For instance, what about policy emerged as salient in the literature?
  • I am concerned that one of your research questions was about highlighting strengths of these populations and currently your findings do not do this work—nor is this highlighted in the Discussion.
• Discussion
  • Right now, it feels like the special focus on the U.S. South doesn’t feel important because it feels random, especially when you included studies from across the world.

Author Response

Round 2

Reviewer 2 Report

Thank you for the opportunity to review your revision. You have addressed my concerns at this time!