Australia's LGBTIQ Research Data Landscape

• Published date: 01 June 2022
• Author: Karinna Saxby
• Date: 01 June 2022
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/1467-8462.12462

The Australian Economic Review, vol. 55, no. 2, pp. 290–308 DOI: 10.1111/1467-8462.12462

Data Article

Australia's LGBTIQ Research Data Landscape

Karinna Saxby*

Abstract

The past decades have seen rapid changes in

societal attitudes and policy surrounding

members of the LGBTIQ community, however

this community continues to experience ad-

verse social and economic outcomes relative

to their cisgendered heterosexual counter-

parts. Understanding the LGBTIQ data land-

scape is essential to promote scholarship in

this space and highlight avenues for future

data collection. Here I provide an overview of

the 17 national data surveys in Australia that

capture information on either sexual or

gender diversity and are either repeated or

longitudinal samples. For each dataset,

I provide details on questions pertaining to

sexual and gender diversity, indicative sample

sizes and age ranges, scope of survey, and

data custodians. Altogether, I find thatcollec-

tion of information on sexual and gender

diverse (SGD) populations in Australia is

poor and terminology varies widely. Only

seven datasets capture information on both

sexual and gender diversity and, of these,

none are nationally representative, and only

one is a longitudinal sample. Altogether, this

review highlights the need for large‐scale,

representative and longitudinal data capture

of SGD populations in Australia.

JEL CLASSIFICATION

J16; I14; J71

1. Introduction

While the past decades have seen tremendous

improvements in the rights and visibility of

sexual and gender diverse (SGD) populations

in the developed world, these populations

continue to experience adverse social, eco-

nomic and health outcomes relative to their

cisgenderedheterosexual counterparts (Hillier

et al. 2003; Mayer et al. 2008; Badgett 2009;

Mcnair, Szalacha and Hughes et al. 2011;

Grulich et al. 2014; Denier and Waite 2016;

Dempsey et al. 2020). To provide ongoing

monitoring of these inequalities, there is a

pressing need for robust and high‐quality data

that captures information on SGD populations

alongside key demographic, health, social and

economic dimensions. Understanding the ex-

tent of data capture across different domains

and subgroups within the lesbian, gay,

bisexual, trans and gender diverse, intersex

or queer (LGBTIQ) community is vital to

inform future scholarship and data collection.

To this end, here I provide an overview of

Australia's national LGBTIQ data landscape,

including information on the approaches taken

to capture gender and/or sexual diversity and

indicative sample sizes for each dataset, and

provide recommendations for advancing scho-

larship in this space.

*Centre for Health E conomics, Monash Uni versity,

Caulfield East, Victoria 314 5, Australia; email :

<karinna.saxby@mo nash.edu>.

The Committee on the Status of LGBTQ +Individuals in

the Economics Profession (CSQIEP) of the American

Economics Association (AEA) awarded Saxby, De New

and Petrie (2020) the inaugural 2020/2021 AEA CSQIEP

@LGBTQ_Econ research award for outstanding contri-

bution to the economics of LGBTQ +people.

© 2022 The Authors. The Australian Economic Review published by John Wiley & Sons Australia, Ltd on behalf of The University of

Melbourne, Melbourne Institute: Applied Economic & Social Research, Faculty of Business and Economics.

This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative CommonsAttribution License, which permits use, distribution and reproduction in

any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

1.1 Key Definitions and Considerations

Language around sexual and gender diversity

has been rapidly changing over the last

several decades. F irst, it is importa nt to

note that until recently the term gender was

often, and still sometimes is, used inter-

changeably with sex. However, they are

distinct concepts (Diamond 2002). Sex is

defined as biological sex assigned at birth (that

is, male, female, or intersex) and is based on the

physical features or sex characteristics (in-

cluding genitals, gonads and chromosome

patterns) one is born with (Hill et al. 2021a).

The term intersex is used to describe people

born with sex characteristics that do not fitthe

‘typical’binary notions of male or female (Hill

et al. 2021a). Gender can be thought of as a

social and cultural construct used to classify

individuals as male or female (Diamond 2002).

Gender identity therefore recognises an indivi-

dual's conception of their gender and how they

express this to others; for example, being

assigned female at birth, but identifying as a

male, or, not identifying with any gender.

Cisgendered individuals are those whose gender

identity matches their sex assigned at

birth. Individuals may also use terms that

capture a range of gender identities such as

gender non‐conforming,gender non‐binary,

genderqueer, or gender diverse. These indivi-

duals may identify more closely with masculi-

nity or feminity, with both, or with neither. As

umbrella terms, transgender or trans are

alsoused to describe people who have gender

identities, expressions, or behaviours that differ

from their birth sex. Gender identity does not

predicate any specific sexual orientation.

Conceptualisation of sexuality is generally

captured through three different domains: beha-

viour, attraction, and identity (Mishel 2019;

Laumann et al. 2000). Sexual behaviour corre-

sponds to the gender of individuals' sexual

partners, sexual attraction describes who indivi-

duals are attracted to. Sexual identity describes

how individuals expresses themselves sexually or

romantically (Mishel 2019; Lyons et al. 2021)

and includes diverse labels such as lesbian, gay,

bisexual, queer, pansexual and asexual. These

terms will be used throughout the review.

2. Methods

In order to catalogue datasets that include

information on SGD individuals, I first conducted

a‘grey’literature review.

1

I reviewed recent

reports and publications (including by govern-

ment agencies, research centres, and researchers),

which had sought to quantify the number of

people who identify as LGBTIQ, and their

associated reference lists (Qu, Knight and

Higgins 2016; ABS 2018; AIHW 2018; Wilson

and Shalley 2018; Callander et al. 2020; Carman

et al. 2020; Wilson et al. 2020; Wilson, Temple

and Lyons 2021). I next reviewed datasets

operated and/or funded by ACON, Australia's

largest not‐for‐profit LGBTIQ community health

organisation, together with their research part-

ners: the Centre for Social Research in Health,

University of New South Wales (UNSW); the

Kirby Institute, UNSW; the Australian Research

Centre in Sex, Health and Society, La Trobe

University; the Centre for Values, Ethics and

the Law in Medicine, University of Sydney; the

National Drug and Alcohol Research Centre; and

Gay and Lesbian Health Victoria (ACON 2021).

Finally, I reviewed all datasets currently pro-

vided, or available upon request, through govern-

ment agencies. This included the Australian

Bureau of Statistics (via Microdata download or

the DataLab), the Australian Institute of Health

and Welfare, the Australian Institute of Family

Studies, and the Australian Government

Department of Social Services (via the National

Centre for Longitudinal Data). Datasets that were

non‐repeated (that is, datasets that were neither

longitudinal nor repeated cross‐sectional sam-

ples), did not recruit participants from across all

of Australia, as well as specific subpopulation

datasets (for example, rural only respondents)

were not included. I then reviewed all of the data

dictionaries and/or original survey questionnaires

for each datasets' inclusion of questions per-

taining to either sexual or gender diversity;

including same‐sex relationship status, sexual

identity, sexual attraction, sexual experiences,

intersex status, and gender identity. Where data

dictionaries or survey questionnaires were not

made available, I sourced information from

publications that had recently used the data, or

other reports that provided summary statistics by

291Saxby: Australia's LGBTIQ Research Data Landscape

© 2022 The Authors. The Australian Economic Review published by John Wiley & Sons Australia, Ltd on behalf of The

University of Melbourne, Melbourne Institute: Applied Economic & Social Research, Faculty of Business and Economics.