With the growing emphasis on ensuring cultural competency in the field of clinical psychology, the literature must meet the needs of mental health professionals by accurately reporting demographic information and including sexual and gender minority populations in empirically driven publications. Past content analyses have shown a significant lack of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) representation within related mental health journals. However, a comprehensive review of the actual number of LGBT individuals included in empirical studies within top-tier clinical psychology journals has not been conducted.

The present study examined five prominent clinical psychology journals to determine the extent to which sexual and gender minorities were represented within empirical samples. A total of 5,796 articles' method, abstract, and result sections were reviewed. Of these, 3,656 articles met inclusionary criteria within the time frame of January 1997 to December 2006. A total of 944,839 participants were reported in the articles meeting inclusionary criteria, of which only 7,310 (0.8%) participants were identified as LGBT. Results show that there is a statistically significant difference between the sample frequencies and the expected frequencies for the demographic descriptors of sexual orientation, sex, race, and Hispanic origin. Implications, limitations, and future research are discussed.