Surveys. surveys. surveys. What do we learn from them? Sometimes its whatever we want to based on our interpretation. I remember my Dean touted that we had the 5th best architectural school in the Greater South East. Me, being the questioning kind, looked at the research and found that we had one student that had answered the survey and we lost points because of parking / traffic. The number one school had three people answer the questionnaire. So I'm always cautious when someone sends me survey results.
The number of British people defining themselves as “bisexual” has jumped by 45 per cent in just three years, according new official estimates.
For the first time, more young people in the UK describe themselves as bisexual than gay or lesbian combined, the figures from the Office for National Statistics show.
It is the latest evidence pointing to a shift in attitudes towards sexuality, with increasing numbers viewing their own position as somewhere on a spectrum rather than it being a black-or-white question. – telegraph.co.uk
The main points mentioned in the study (entitled Experimental Official Statistics on sexual identity in the UK in 2015 by region, sex, age, marital status, ethnicity and NS-SEC) are :
- Males are more likely to identify as gay, lesbian or bisexual than females
- London has the largest percentage of the population who identify as gay, lesbian or bisexual
- Lesbian, gay and bisexual population are most likely to be single, never married or civil partnered
Just 1.7 per cent of the population identified themselves as lesbian, gay or bisexual in the ONS’s Annual Population Survey (APS) – although LGBT groups have long argued that official research, by its very nature, is likely to significantly underestimate the true level.
Nevertheless, the ONS said the 45 per cent rise was clearly statistically significant.
Overall it estimates that the number of people in the UK openly identifying as bisexual jumped from 230,000 in 2012 to 334,000 at the time of the most recent population survey carried out last year.
By contrast, the number defined as gay or lesbian rose by a more modest 8.3 per cent in that time to 586,000.
A further 206,000 were classed as “other” and the equivalent of 2.2 million refused to answer or said they did not know their sexual identity. – telegraph.co.uk
I'm a visual learner so here are the graphs from the study. If you would like to view the entire document, it can be found and downloaded at ons.gov.uk. Click on the graphs for a larger view.
What is interesting about this first graph is that the do not know or refuse category is larger than the other 3 categories that are not "heterosexual or straight." So the fact that we are saying the numbers are great and large, they probably are so much greater.
When I read about the increase in gay / bi numbers, I was selfish and thought, I hope they're men! And I as well thought that the larger number of bisexuals would be women.
Are youths more open with answering questions about their sexuality these days or are they more open about sex in general?
So what are your thoughts?
Do you think this is an accurate survey?
How far off do you think these numbers are?
Are these numbers mirrored in your country or do you think that the UK stats are higher or lower than your nation?
What percent of the "Other" category do you think is LGBT?
h/t: telegraph.co.uk, ons.gov.uk
Here’s a question I have: Do
Here's a question I have: Do these results show an actual increase or is it that people are just more willing to be honest about their sexuality? As the stigma against the Queer/Alphabet Soup community diminishes, we might not see an actual increase in the amount of Queer people just their desire to identify.
Also, how many did not respond to the survey? Almost all modern day surveys have only an 8-9% response rate (and falling). If over 90% of people contacted refuse to even respond, then how accurate are these results? Just something to keep in mind when reading about studies.