THE AWARENESS AND BEHAVIOR OF UNIVERSITY STUDENTS TOWARD SEXUAL MINORITY：Part 1

―A RESEARCH STUDY THROUGH AN ONLINE SURVEY―

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to clarify characteristic attitudes of young people, ranging from ages 18 to early twenties, towards sexual minorities. The relationship between the cognitive awareness of sexual minorities among young people and their characteristic attitudes was also investigated. We conducted a questionnaire survey among the 439 first year students （males 137, females 300, na 2） of A University to gather information using an online questionnaire system in order to preserve participants’ privacy and to yield a high response rate. To obtain reliable results, we referred to the research report of Kamano et al ［“National questionnaire survey on attitudes towards sexual minority” （2016）］, with which our data were compared in order to assess the characteristic attitudes of young people in relation to other age groups. The survey results indicated that our participants have greater awareness and better knowledge of sexual minorities than those of the national questionnaire survey. It also shows that our participants have higher tendencies to avoid discrimination against sexual minority. These results can be interpreted to be due to the higher educational backgrounds of our participants. Another factor that differentiates our participants and can influence the results is the fact that their majors are related to healthcare. Based on the characteristics of our participants, our results cannot be generalized to represent the characteristics of typical young people in a straightforward manner. However, we believe our results might be considered to foresee the future, when the knowledge of healthcare is spread throughout the society. This is the first report of this study which extends over three years in which the survey of the first-year students of A University will be conducted every year.