Emerging research on queer-spectrum and trans-spectrum students in higher education

Abstract

Queer-spectrum and trans-spectrum students remain a significantly underserved population within higher education, despite the presence of significant disparities across measures of campus climate, academic engagement, and overall health. This paper explores the campus climate, overall health, and academic engagement of queer-spectrum and trans-spectrum undergraduate students attending four-year colleges and universities in the US through an analysis of seven national data sets, including the 2017 data sets of the National Survey of Student Engagement (Center for Postsecondary Research, Indiana University Bloomington), the 2016 Undergraduate Student Experience at the Research University Survey (SERU-AAU Consortium, Center for Studies in Higher Education, University of California-Berkeley and University of Minnesota Twin Cities), the 2016 American College Health Association--National College Health Assessment, and the 2016 data sets of four surveys conducted by the Cooperative Institutional Research Program, including The Freshman Survey (TFS), the Your First College Year Survey (YFCY), the Diverse Learning Environments Survey (DLE), and the College Senior Survey (CSS) (University of California-Los Angeles, Higher Education Research Institute).