A Comparison of Perception-based and Behavior-based Measures on Sexual Orientation in a Telephone Health Survey

• Activity Number: 165
• Type: Contributed
• Date/Time: Monday, August 9, 2004 : 2:00 PM to 3:50 PM
• Sponsor: Section on Survey Research Methods
• Author(s): Wei Yen*+ and Charles DiSogra and David Grant and Rong Huang
• Companies: University of California, Los Angeles and University of California, Los Angeles and University of California, Los Angeles and University of California, Los Angeles
• Keywords: sexual orientation ; California Health Interview Survey ; data quality ; homosexual ; gay/lesbian ; bisexual

Abstract

The 2003 California Health Interview Survey included two measures on sexual orientation: perception-based (PB) and behavior-based (BB). The PB measure is based on the question "Do you think of yourself as straight or heterosexual, as gay, lesbian, or homosexual, or as bisexual?" The BB measure consists of a question on the number of sexual partners during the past 12 months and a question on sex of the partners. Common categories of homosexual (including gay and lesbian), bisexual, and heterosexual are constructed for each measure and compared between the two measures. Results from the first half of the survey show that with the PB measure, 2% of the respondents reported homosexual, 1% bisexual, and 95% heterosexual among adults age 18-70. Correspondingly, with the BB measure, 2% of the respondents reported homosexual, 0.3% bisexual, 76% heterosexual, and another 20% reporting no sexual partners in the past 12 months. The concordance between the two measures for homosexual persons is 60% and a very low 15% for bisexual persons. This paper further discusses possible factors, including data limitations, that may contribute to the discordance between the two measures.