Impact of sex-based and sexual orientation-based victimization on training discontinuity among swiss apprentices: a longitudinal study.

Abstract

This longitudinal study examines the impact of sex-based and sexual orientation-based victimization on training discontinuity among students in the Swiss Vocational Education and Training (VET) system. Drawing on a representative cohort of 1370 first-year apprentices enrolled in six vocational training centers in the canton of Geneva, data were collected across three waves (2020-2023). Experienced violence was measured at three time points, and training discontinuity was defined as absence from class registers in the subsequent academic year (T + 1). Logistic regression models were estimated on 15 multiply imputed datasets to address missing data. Results indicate that experiencing sexual orientation-based violence at the beginning of the apprenticeship (T1) significantly increases the likelihood of training discontinuity at T2, even after controlling for assigned sex, the sex-typing of training fields, and concealment of sexual orientation. In contrast, sex-based violence was not significantly associated with training discontinuity in the following year, and sexual orientation-based violence measured at T2 was not significantly associated with training discontinuity at T3. These findings suggest that early experiences of sexual orientation-based victimization may disrupt persistence in VET. They underscore the importance of developing inclusive prevention and support strategies aimed at protecting apprentices from sexual orientation-based victimization, with the goal of reducing training discontinuity.

Supplementary information: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1186/s40461-026-00211-0.