The EU LGBTI II Survey, 2019

European Union Agency for Fundamental Rights (FRA), Vienna, Austria
The EU LGBTI II survey was carried out by the European Union Agency for Fundamental Rights (FRA) in 2019. It is a large-scale survey into experiences and views of lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans and intersex (LGBTI) individuals. The survey provides comparative evidence on how LG...
published 2021-05-03, Version 1.1.0
Delivery

Full Metadata Record

Identification

Resource Type

Dataset : Numeric

Version

1.1.0

Language of Resource

German

Title

The EU LGBTI II Survey, 2019

Origin Information

Publisher

Publication Date

2021-05-03

Access

Availability

Delivery
C - Data and documents are only released for academic research and teaching after the data depositor’s written authorization. For this purpose the Data Archive obtains a written permission with specification of the user and the analysis intention.

Rights

All metadata from GESIS DBK are available free of restriction under the Creative Commons CC0 1.0 Universal Public Domain Dedication. However, GESIS requests that you actively acknowledge and give attribution to all metadata sources, such as the data providers and any data aggregators, including GESIS. For further information see https://dbk.gesis.org/dbksearch/guidelines.asp

Contributors

Pavlou, Miltos
Fric, Karel
EU Fundamental Rights Agency (via contactors: Agilis SA – Homoevolution, Greece)

Methods

Sample

Sampled Universe
LGBTI is an acronym that stands for Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Trans and Intersex people. These terms are used to describe a person’s sexual orientation or/and gender identity/expression and/or sex characteristics. The target population of the EU LGBTI survey II was defined as: (1) People who identify themselves under the lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans or intersex umbrella terms (allowing for sub-categories in the trans group, such as trans woman, trans man, non-binary, cross-dressing woman, cross-dressing man, genderqueer, gender-fluid, agender or polygender). (2) people who are at least 15 years old. (3) people who have lived in their current country for at least past 1 year and whose current country is EU Member State, Serbia or North Macedonia (regardless of residency or citizenship). Given the survey design, LGBTI survey II data are based on a narrower population than the whole LGBTI population of the 30 surveyed countries. The survey population consists of persons who: - can be reached through the online means used, i.e. those who have access to internet; and - became aware of the survey, for example by visiting a website/app where the survey was promoted; and chose to complete the survey. Compared to the 2012 wave, the coverage of the second wave of the LGBTI Survey has been extended by including: - Specific questions to Intersex people; - Respondents aged 15-17 years; - Respondents living in North Macedonia and Serbia.
Sampling
Non-probability: Availability; Sampling Procedure Comment: The LGBTI survey was an online opt-in survey. Respondents were self-selected as they volunteered to participate in the survey. This design was adopted because it would not have been possible to achieve a representative random sample of LGBTI persons across the EU in the absence of sampling frames and reliable, detailed information about the target population in terms of its size, characteristics and composition in the survey countries. At the survey design stage the sizes of the target population and subpopulations were estimated to provide guidance for the recruitment process to help achieving a balanced sample. Because the true percentage of the LGBTI population is unknown, previous studies into prevalence of LGBTI people in the population were mapped. This provided estimates of the relative sizes of each LGBTI category. Continuous real-time monitoring of the data collection progress was used to determine which recruitment channels and strategies should be prioritized to attract more respondents from underrepresented strata. Strata were defined based on the combination of LGBTI group and age group (15-34 years, 35-54 years, 55+ years). In order to reduce a possible bias, survey dissemination was targeted as broadly as possible. A combination of recruitment channels across the participating countries was used to target separately all LGBTI groups, and reach out to respondents irrespective of their link or affiliation to LGBTI civil society organisations, communities or associations. Off-line activities were undertaken in order to recruit “hard-to-reach” subgroups of the target population (e.g. elderly or intersex persons).

Time Dimension

  • Cross-section

Collection Mode

  • Self-administered questionnaire: Web-based
  • Web-administered survey using anonymous online questionnaire

DataSets and Files

  • Unit Type: Individual
    Number of Units: 139799
    Number of Variables: 514

Description

  • Abstract

    The EU LGBTI II survey was carried out by the European Union Agency for Fundamental Rights (FRA) in 2019. It is a large-scale survey into experiences and views of lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans and intersex (LGBTI) individuals. The survey provides comparative evidence on how LGBTI persons in the EU experience discrimination, violence and harassment in different areas of life, including employment, education, healthcare, housing and other services. The EU LGBTI II survey is a follow-up of the first–ever major international survey on LGBT people, which the Agency conducted in 2012. The EU LGBTI II survey is a follow-up to the first major international survey of LGBT people conducted by the Agency in 2012. The EU LGBTI II survey is a web-based opt-in survey using an anonymous online questionnaire. The survey is based on a self-selective sample. The survey was conducted between 27 May and 22 July 2019 via the website www.lgbtisurvey.eu and collected valid responses from 139,799 respondents from the Member States of the European Union (EU), Northern Macedonia and Serbia (in this context, the United Kingdom is included in the group of EU Member States, reflecting the situation at the time of data collection in 2019). Following an EU-wide open call for tenders, the FRA contracted a consortium of Agilis SA (http://www.agilis-sa.gr/) and Homoevolution (https://homoevolution.com/), based in Greece, to carry out the survey according to the FRA´s technical specifications and under the supervision of FRA staff who monitored compliance with strict quality control procedures. The EU LGBTI II survey asked a number of questions about the experiences of LGBTI people in the following areas: (1) Perceived increase or decrease in intolerance, prejudice and violence against LGBTI people; (2) Discrimination at work, looking for work and in several other areas of life; (3) Safe environment; (4) Physical or sexual victimisation; (5) Harassment; (6) Social context of being LGBTI; (7) Background information (age, education, income, civil status); (8) Specific sections dedicated to issues related to the life of trans as well as intersex persons. 1. Sexual orientation and sexual behaviour: to whom is the respondent sexually attracted; sex of sexual partners in the last five years; country of current residence and length of stay; citizen of the country; citizenship; country of birth; age at realisation of sexual orientation; age at first outing. 2. Trans respondents: Age at realisation that feelings about one´s own sex do not match the sex assigned at birth; age at first outing; measures taken to change body to better match one´s own sex identity and age at first intervention; reasons why no measures were taken to change body; medical treatment abroad to change one´s appearance, including buying hormones via the internet; avoiding expressing one´s own sex (or desired sex) by means of appearance and clothing for fear of being attacked, threatened or harassed; changing one´s legal sex; reasons for not changing one´s legal sex so far. 3. Intersexual respondents: type of existing variants of sexual characteristics or treatment for them; diagnosis of variants of sexual characteristics by health professionals; time of diagnosis (before birth, at birth, in childhood, adolescence or at a later age); time of first diagnosis in adolescence or at a later age; age at first realisation of variants of one´s own sexual characteristics; age at first outing; medical treatment to change sexual characteristics; age at first medical treatment; age at first medical treatment; consent given to treatment; type of treatment; informing the interviewee or his/her parents about possible positive or negative consequences; difficulties in registering civil status or sex in public documents; nature of difficulties; greatest difficulties encountered by intersexuals in the country. 4. Developments and responses to homophobia, transphobia, biphobia and intersex phobia: perceived increase or decrease in intolerance, prejudice and violence against LGBTI persons in the country over the last five years; main reasons for decrease or increase in prejudice and intolerance or violence; effectiveness of government action in combating prejudice and intolerance 5. Discrimination at work, when looking for work and in various other areas of life: Experience of discrimination in different spheres of life; situation at the time of the most recent discrimination; reasons for discrimination other than LGBTI; reporting of the incident by the respondent or another person; organisation or institution to which the incident was reported; reasons why the incident was not reported; paid employment during the last five years; personal contact and experiences of LGBTI during employment: openness towards others, silence, negative comments towards oneself or one´s own person general; experienced or perceived support in the professional environment; experience of LGBTI during schooling; experienced discrimination by classmates or teachers during schooling; consideration of changing schools, experienced or perceived support during schooling; LGBTI as an issue during schooling; experienced discrimination in health services; awareness of support organisations in the country; awareness of equality bodies in the country. 6. Safe environment: frequency of avoidance behaviour for fear of being attacked, threatened or harassed (holding hands with a same-sex partner in public, avoiding certain places or locations); situation where open contact with LGBTI is avoided; appropriate response by the state government to the safety needs of LGBTI persons. 7. Physical and sexual victimisation: frequency of physical or sexual assaults in the last five years for any reason and in relation to LGBTI; time of the last physical or sexual assault for LGBTI; type of last assault, single or multiple assailants; perpetrator or relationship to perpetrator; sex of perpetrator; location of assault; reporting of the incident to an organisation or institution and type of institution; reason why the incident was not reported to the police; health effects of the incident 8. Harassment: type of experienced harassment for any reason in the last five years; frequency of experienced harassment for any reason and LGBTI in the last twelve months; frequency of incidents; other reason for offensive or threatening incident; time of the last incident; nature of the offensive or threatening incident; single or multiple perpetrators; perpetrator(s) or Relationship to the offender; sex of the offender; location of the incident; report of the incident to an organisation or institution and the nature of that institution; reason why the incident was not reported to the police. 9. Social context: openness in dealing with LGBTI towards different groups (proportion), general life satisfaction. 10. Background information: highest educational attainment; employment status; degree of urbanisation of the place of residence; marital status; living with partner/spouse; sex of the partner; full or partial openness towards the partner; nationality of the partner; moving within the EU together with the same sex partner after marriage or registration of the partnership; difficulties in accessing benefits or services due to the same sex partner; household size; household composition; Children and relationship with these children; raising a child/children together with the partner; legal situation in the family regarding children; membership of a minority; religious affiliation; self-assessment of health; longstanding illness or health problem; feeling depressed in the last two weeks; getting by on the household income; experience with housing problems; duration of housing problems; ranking of the three most important reasons for housing problems. 11. Knowledge of the survey: source of information about the survey; type and frequency of media use; participation in the FRA EU LGBT survey in 2012, participation in other surveys for LGBTI people, no participation in other surveys; active support of LGBTI organisations Demography: age (grouped); sex assigned at birth; self-description; sexual orientation (grouped); intersexual; Trans person; current gender identity. Additionally coded: Respondent ID; respondent category; interview duration (in seconds); Benchmark X Propensity Combination Weight standardised and trimmed (0.1 - 10. 0 range); EU-30 country weight X Benchmark X Propensity Combination Weight (2019); EU-28 country weight X Benchmark X Propensity Combination Weight (2019); EU-27 country weight X Benchmark X Propensity Combination Weight (2019); Openness scale about being LGBTI, Openness about being LGBTI at work; Openness about being LGBTI at the school; General discrimination in the last 12 months in different areas of life ; Experienced discrimination in the last 12 months in employment (lkw work, atwork); reported a physical or sexual attack to an organisation; experienced harassment in the 5 years prior to the survey for any reason; experienced harassment in the 12 months prior to the survey for any reason; experienced harassment in the 12 months prior to the survey for any reason; experienced harassment in the 12 months prior to the survey because of LGBTI; informed consent to medical treatment; informed consent to medical treatment; informed consent to medical treatment. Treatment/intervention to change sexual characteristics (intersex only).

Note

The LGBTI survey was an online opt-in survey. This means that, unlike surveys with probability samples, the respondents selected themselves into the sample. This design was adopted because it would not have been possible to achieve a representative random sample of LGBTI persons across the EU in the absence of sampling frames and reliable, detailed information about the target population in terms of its size, characteristics and composition in the survey countries. Using the traditional sampling techniques would be also challenging due to low expected prevalence of the target group in the population. Due to social stigma, some LGBTI respondents may choose to conceal being LGBTI in conventional face-to-face interviews and not participate in a survey that requires respondents to identify as LGBTI. Furthermore, considering different data collection modes, research has shown that conventional face-to-face survey mode suffers from a higher level of social desirability bias compared to web surveys, especially when asking sensitive questions. The social desirability bias is expected to be lower in web surveys which are perceived as anonymous and confidential. To avoid such bias, LGBTI survey II was designed to ensure confidentiality and anonymity. Weighting In the absence of official population statistics on the number and structure of the LGBTI population, the estimates of the sizes of the target population and subpopulations were used to provide the basis for a post-stratification weighting. The stratification variables were the LGBTI category and age group. For the calculation of benchmark weights, the age bands 35-54 and 55+ years were merged because the collected sample in the older strata was not sufficiently large to be treated separately. Another factor of imbalance in the sample composition may arise from the fact that people affiliated with LGBTI organisations may be overrepresented. The affiliation (propensity) weights are calculated to correct for possible overrepresentation of affiliated respondents. Besides of the country level weights, EU level weights are provided to ensure that the respondents from each country are represented proportionally to the country’s target population size when producing EU level indicators. Notes on the use of the LGBTI II survey data set The following text provides instructions on how to use the LGBTI II Survey dataset. The dataset includes information on the level of the respondent. The dataset consists of one row per unit, which includes information about the respondent. Each respondent has a unique random identifier RESPONDENT\_ID. Each respondent was categorised into one of five categories (lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans or intersex) based on the screening questions in section A of the questionnaire. Many questions in the survey were adapted to reflect respondent’s category when this was necessary. In practice this meant that, for example, a bisexual respondent would see question C1 in the following form “During the last 12 months, have you personally felt discriminated against because of being bisexual in any of the following situations?” Two sections of the questionnaire (sections TR and IX) were made available for trans and intersex subgroups only, respectively. The dataset includes four weights: BENAFFWT, BENAFFWTEU28, BENAFFWTEU30 and BENAFFWTEU27. BENAFFWT should be used for derivation of indicators at country level. BENAFFWTEU28 should be used for derivation of indicators at EU-28 level (i.e. EU-27 plus UK). Analogically, BENAFFWTEU27 refers to EU27 (i.e. EU without UK) and BENAFFWTEU30 to the total survey sample (i.e. EU27, MK, RS and UK). Other important notes: - Answer categories -888 (Prefer not to say) and -999 (I don’t know) were not visible to respondents when a question first appeared. They became visible only if respondents clicked on the ‘next question’ button without selecting any answer to the current question. This was happening only for questions where categories -888 and/or -999 were mentioned in the questionnaire, unless stated otherwise. - Questions A6 and A6\_1: Until 30 May, A6 was asked if the following rule applied: IF A3=1 or 2. From 30 May onwards the routing changed and thus A6 was asked IF A3=1 or 2 or 6. Question A3 concerns respondent’s current self-identification as a woman / girl, man/ boy, trans woman / girl, trans man / boy, etc. Question A6 asks whether the respondent is or was a trans person. Question A6\_1 was until 30 May asked IF (A3=3 or 4 or 5 or 6) OR A6 =1. After 30 May A6\_1 was asked IF (A3=3 or 4 or 5) OR A6=1. Question A6\_1 asks about current gender identity of respondents who earlier in the survey self-identified as trans. The change in routing of A6 and A6\_1 had a limited impact - 153 cases were routed to the TR section in the first three days of the survey (from whom some may have been correctly categorized as “trans”). - Due to a mistake in programming, in C13\_A\_CODE, 652 respondents from Hungary (A10=13) have an answer with respect to the Equality Body in Croatia (C13\_A\_CODE=HR), while 86 respondents from Croatia (A10=4) have an answer concerning the Equality Body in Hungary (C13\_A\_CODE=HU1). According to C13\_B\_CODE, 86 respondents from Croatia (A10=4) also have an answer to the question concerning the second Equality Body in Hungary (C13\_B\_CODE=HU2). The problem was resolved on 3 June 2019, so that respondents accessing the survey from this date onwards received a question with the correct names of the Equality Bodies in their respective countries. Variables available in the dataset: The dataset is based on a sophisticated questionnaire that includes some questions that apply only to specific target groups and is often filtered with several follow-up questions applying only to a subset of respondents. For example, only those who had a paid job in the past 5 years were asked about their experiences at work in the five years before the survey. Or only those who experienced any discrimination were asked follow-up questions on discrimination incidents. Therefore it is essential to pay attention to the filters applied, as described in the questionnaire. The EU LGBTI II dataset was released following a detailed assessment of confidentiality. As a consequence, the answer categories of some variables were aggregated into a broader range or group. Some variables are not published in the anonymized dataset – this is especially the case for answers in open text fields. The dataset includes variable RESPONDENT\_CATEGORY. This variable reflects the categorisation of respondents which was used in analysis conducted by FRA. The calculation of this variable is described in the technical report. It is important to keep in mind that: - category “lesbian” refers to cisgender endosex lesbians; - category “gay” refers to cisgender endosex gay men; - category “bisexual woman” refers to cisgender endosex bisexual women; - category “bisexual man” refers to cisgender endosex bisexual men. To ease the analysis, several pre-calculated variables and indicators were included in the dataset. These include among others variables on openness about being LGBTI and prevalence of discrimination and harassment. Further important information on the use of the LGBTI II survey data set can be found in the Technical Report.

Coverage

Temporal Coverage

  • 2019-05-27 / 2019-07-22

Geographic Coverage

  • Austria (AT)
  • Belgium (BE)
  • Bulgaria (BG)
  • Cyprus (CY)
  • Czech Republic (CZ)
  • Germany (DE)
  • Denmark (DK)
  • Estonia (EE)
  • Greece (GR)
  • Spain (ES)
  • Finland (FI)
  • France (FR)
  • Croatia (HR)
  • Hungary (HU)
  • Ireland (IE)
  • Italy (IT)
  • Lithuania (LT)
  • Luxembourg (LU)
  • Latvia (LV)
  • Malta (MT)
  • Netherlands (NL)
  • Macedonia, the Former Yugoslav Republic of (MK)
  • Poland (PL)
  • Portugal (PT)
  • Romania (RO)
  • Sweden (SE)
  • Slovenia (SI)
  • Slovakia (SK)
  • Serbia (RS)
  • United Kingdom (GB)

Relations

Alternative Identifiers

  • ZA7604 (Type: ZA-No.)

Related Identifiers

  • Is new version of
    DOI: 10.4232/1.13616

Publications

  • FRA (European Union Agency for Fundamental Rights) (2020), A long way to go for LGBTI equality, Luxembourg, Publications Office. Available at: https://fra.europa.eu/en/publication/2020/eu-lgbti-survey-results
  • FRA (European Union Agency for Fundamental Rights) (2020), A long way to go for LGBTI equality – Technical report, Luxembourg, Publications Office. Available at: https://fra.europa.eu/sites/default/files/fra\_uploads/fra-2020-lgbti-equality-technical-report\_en.pdf

Update Metadata: 2023-02-01 | Issue Number: 3 | Registration Date: 2021-05-03