Study examines public's estimation of gay and lesbian populations

Throughout the years, national polls have shown that Americans have inflated perceptions of national racial, ethnic and cultural minority populations, including the gay and lesbian community. However, a new study by a University of Missouri-Columbia researcher found that Americans have a significantly more reasonable estimation of homosexual populations in their local communities.

"While the actual size of the homosexual population in the United States is difficult to gauge, or even define, citizens' judgments regarding the presence of gays in their local communities appear far more in line with available data than do their estimates of the size of the national gay population," said L. Marvin Overby, professor of Political Science, who conducted the study along with political science professor Jay Barth of Hendrix College.

Overby and Barth used data from a survey conducted by the Social Science Research Laboratory at the University of Mississippi. The sample covered 48 states and generated a total of 995 responses. The survey asked citizens to estimate what percentage of the population in their local communities was gay or lesbian. The survey also looked at peoples' political beliefs and whether they thought homosexuality was determined by biological factors or was a lifestyle choice.

The results showed, compared with Gallup poll estimates, that people believed the national gay and lesbian population to be 22 percent, while the respondents' in the survey estimated the local gay population to be only 5 percent. Overby said women gave significantly higher estimates than similarly situated men, younger respondents provided higher estimates than older ones, and those from metropolitan settings gave higher estimates than those from non-metropolitan areas.

More surprisingly, they also found that self-identified Republicans and those who believed that homosexuality was a lifestyle choice tended to think there were smaller numbers of homosexuals in their local communities than did similarly situated Democrats. Previous studies, Overby said, generally show that overestimates are more likely to come from individuals who feel threatened by the minority group. This data, though, indicates that those Americans who tend to see a greater "gay threat" do so because the gay community is small and is composed of people who have made a choice to be different, Overby said.

"This ideological dynamic is consistent with the position of the religious right that the real threat posed by homosexuals rests not in their large numbers but in the fact that a small number of people who choose to be gay are demanding preferential legal treatment at the expense of heterosexuals," Overby said.

The study is currently under review at the journal Polity.

Links:

L. Marvin Overby
Department of Political Science

Jay Barth, Hendrix College

Social Science Research Laboratory, University of Mississippi

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