A RESEARCHER’S PERSPECTIVE ON THE NEED FOR LGBTQ DATA COLLECTION

Source: The Daily Beast

STORYTELLING AND POLICYMAKING

As an LGBTQ individual born and reared in the deep South, the struggles I experienced in my youth significantly differ from ones I experience now. I thought the difficulties of being LGBTQ would end once I entered college, but battling disparities within the policymaking arena comes with a whole different set of obstacles and unspoken rules. The most influential economic thinker in my research, Karl Marx, wrote in his Eleven Theses on Feuerbach “philosophers have, up until now, only interpreted the world in various ways; the point, however, is to change it.” Marx wrote this thesis to position philosophy within applied settings in order to answer questions about how the world operates, and how change in the world occurs. Changing the world for LGBTQ folk, beyond minor alterations at the margins, proves at times more difficult than “interpreting” LGBTQ public problems.

For advocacy and policymaking, heartfelt stories translate into currency. One of many possible examples is Alabama peanut farmer Nathan Mathis’ story about his lesbian daughter who committed suicide (a serious issue in the LGBTQ community). In a moving video that went viral, Mathis disapproved of comments made by former Senate candidate, Roy Moore, about LGBTQ people: “[Moore] said all gay people are perverts, abominations…We don’t need someone like that representing us in Washington.” Republican nominee and conservative Roy Moore would go on to lose to Democratic nominee, Doug Jones, in the Alabama Senate special election. Doug Jones’ marginal victory (see Table 1) came after 25 years of a Republican political monopoly in the Alabama Senate. Stories like Mathis’ change the landscape of politics daily, but policy consists of more than storytelling.

WHAT DATA?

Despite the value of storytelling, answers to LGBTQ issues ultimately require empirical inquiry — or analysis using big data, mathematics, and rigorous statistical methods. However, when it comes to the LGBTQ community, practically no available data exists.

Researchers often utilize the data provided by the census and other federal agencies to conduct top notch research on pressing public policy issues, but this opportunity is rarely available to the small number of LGBTQ policy researchers. The American Community Survey (ACS), a population survey, assists in determining the expenditure of 675 billion federal and state dollars annually. Unfortunately, the only type of sexual orientation or gender identity and expression (SOGIE) question on the survey concerns marital status. The Center for American Progress, a progressive think tank in Washington, D.C., reports that ACS provides some insight into LGBTQ families with regard to same-sex couple households, but not regarding discrimination in the workplace, housing, or public accommodations. Being unable to assess these other factors restrains positive social change LGBTQ people desperately need.

The lack of data collection also makes it more difficult for researchers to effectively help elder LGBT people who face more constraints than the average person. The National Survey of Older Americans Act Participants, a national sample survey of elders who receive services from Title III programs that collected some data on LGBTQ status, wound up having the only LGBTQ question recently removed.* Eliminating this question prevents researchers from identifying the ways in which LGBT elders face inequality with regard to these services, and ingrains heteronormativity further into the government.

The Trump Administration also removed questions form the Annual Program Performance Report for Centers and Independent Living, a survey that analysts use to determine the equitability and effectiveness of disability services. Excluding this data collection for those with disabilities can further isolate LGBTQ people with disabilities and hamper their ability to live independent lives.

A RESEARCHER’S WORST NIGHTMARE: BAD METHODOLOGY

General problems with research arise from excluding LGBTQ status questions in random sample surveys. In statistics, the most important aspect of research design relates to the randomness and size of samples. Generalizable claims about LGBTQ people only work when the data come from random and large samples. That is because these mathematical rules allow policymakers to invoke what statisticians call the central limit theorem. With LGBTQ questions left out of surveys, claims about the experiences of LGBTQ people stop at the limited sample of people. Consider the 2015 U.S. Transgender Survey that surveyed near 28,000 transgender individuals: the largest survey in history to examine the experience of transgender people in the United States. The historical nonrandom surveys limits all conclusions to the 28,000 respondents.

MOVING FORWARD

Moving forward, the federal government (and even state governments that administer random surveys) should add LGBTQ questions in surveys. Adding such questions to surveys allows for policymakers to better target populations that need additional services and use resources more efficiently. However, this type of change does not occur overnight.

The Center for American Progress has published a column that provides information about LGBTQ data collection.Researchers and academics should utilize the column and start incorporating SOGIE questions into their own research. While questions may not find their way into federal surveys overnight, each individual researcher can change the narrative by adding a few words.

I offer this final anecdote, which I previously wrote on, for researchers moving forward: It was Monday, January 8, 2017. A group of well-rested McCourt students entered Healy 103, ready to review basic regression (a statistical concept) material with McCourt’s Professor Barbara Schone. This review session began, much like her classes, with the question everybody wanted her to ask: what are your worries about the statistics material? But what students didn’t know — and may still not know — was that Professor Schone was going to plant a seed of knowledge that would fundamentally challenge other students’ assumptions about sex and gender.

We arrived to this discussion topic when a fellow student asked how Schone knew a female sex variable was a dummy variable. Sex or gender are often coded in binary terms (male/female or man/woman). Schone highlighted, though, that as policymakers, we have to start considering our core assumptions about what “sex” and “gender” mean. These two things are changing — as social constructions do throughout region and time.

I followed up with Schone after the lecture to express interest in writing this article. In her reply, she wrote, “I wrote a paper last year that addressed sex differences in health, and this was one of the first occasions where I thought about sex and gender identity in any depth. Most researchers who are not focused on those issues don’t think about them carefully, and I think that is unfortunate.”

Schone’s paper “Understanding Differences in Mortality and Morbidity by Sex: The Role of Biological, Social, and Economic Factors” reports on the sex-based differences in health across economic, social, and biological characteristics. Professor Schone writes, “as a starting point, it is helpful to begin by thinking about definitions of sex versus gender. The World Health Organization…defines sex as ‘… the biological and physiological characteristics that define women’ and defines gender as ‘… the socially constructed roles, behaviors, activities, and attributes that a given society considers appropriate for men and women.’ It is clear that mortality and morbidity depend on both sex and gender.”

Schone’s response to my questions shows researcher’s potential to make broader impacts in their work — even if they do not specifically research LGBTQ issues. I challenge every researcher and academic to question their assumptions about sex and gender. Questioning deeply rooted structures of sex and gender is a daunting task, but there is no such thing as policy without perspective, remedy without reason, or treatment without theory. It is time for research and academic circles to start incorporating SOGIE questions into their surveys and help reverse the alienation of LGBTQ people in society.

*Since this original CAP piece was published, some SOGIE questions have been placed back on some surveys.