Comments on: Beware: Journalists Reporting on Science

By: Helen in Ireland

Helen in Ireland — Sun, 26 Sep 2010 07:48:19 +0000

“The findings, based on interviews with more than 450,000 people – the biggest pool of social data after the census – show that an estimated 481,000 people regard themselves as gay and a further 245,000 – mainly women – say they are bisexual.”

My problem is with the basic maths – how can a survey find that 31 000 people MORE than they surveyed say that they are gay? Nevermind the 245 000 who are bisexual ?

Or was there a typo in reporting the true figure…?

By: esurience

esurience — Fri, 24 Sep 2010 19:36:30 +0000

http://www.pinknews.co.uk/2010/09/24/1.5-figure-is-wrong-says-gay-website-with-2.2.-million-members/

“Gay networking websites Gaydar and GaydarGirls say that estimates of 1.5 per cent of the population being gay or bisexual cannot be true as they have 2.2 million members in the UK.”

By: Priya Lynn

Priya Lynn — Fri, 24 Sep 2010 15:17:09 +0000

Clay, the problem is with both.

By: Clay

Clay — Fri, 24 Sep 2010 14:19:24 +0000

The problem is with the ONS survey, not the Guardian’s reporting of it.

By: ZRAinSWVA

ZRAinSWVA — Fri, 24 Sep 2010 13:17:02 +0000

Please note how they conducted the survey: “In both cases, the sexual identity question was administered to all members of the household aged 16 or over who were available at the time of interview to provide their own responses”.

Does anyone really believe that they could survey a household and obtain valid responses?

By: Paul Mc

Paul Mc — Fri, 24 Sep 2010 12:28:22 +0000

I’m afraid the headline 1.5% gay is likely to stick. It is consistent with other population surveys in the UK and France in last 10 years.

A journalist not looking for cheap filler would then ask why, if there are only 750,000 gay or bisexual people then how come ~1.5Million people (wish there was some collective data about this – just my guess from news reports) attend Pride events in the UK? With a demographic of ~18-50 based on my observation.

If only two thirds of those are in fact LBGT and also that this demographic age range is 2/3 of the whole LBGT community (including those not yet out/adult) and finally that 2/3 of this demographic actually bother to attend any pride, that puts a UK LBGT commuity (those largely identifying as LBGT openly) at 2.25million or 3.75%.

Does anyone have a better way to do this than my 2/3 rule?

By: cd

cd — Fri, 24 Sep 2010 05:28:24 +0000

I have come to the impression that with the exception of a few ethnic groups and regions that have higher rates, rates of homosexuality &c are pretty uniform worldwide.

This survey is awful, though. When you’re trying to poll for identifications that individually run around 1-2% in the population and aggregate to 5% (8% tops), allowing 3% “don’t know”s defeats the whole endeavor.

By: EZam

EZam — Thu, 23 Sep 2010 23:22:40 +0000

I think the only way to find out the real number of LGB people is to force EVERYONE to participate in those experiments where they test arousal levels.

By: Mark F.

Mark F. — Thu, 23 Sep 2010 21:25:58 +0000

Timothy:

The liberals are obviously turning our young people gay! ;-)

By: Chris McCoy

Chris McCoy — Thu, 23 Sep 2010 20:19:11 +0000

The ONS Survey can be found here Their analysis of the "Sexual Identity" question breakdown is here. Self-reporting Surveys will always be under-reported. The official analysis doesn't appear to even consider under-reporting.