1. Introduction
Gaps in reliable, local data remain a barrier to improving the well-being of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer (LGBTQ) communities. Although national studies have expanded understanding of LGBTQ experiences, gaps at the state and local levels continue to limit progress toward equitable social and health outcomes. The exclusion of questions about sexual orientation and gender identity (SOGI) from federal surveys, starting in 2025, highlights the importance of state and local research for making visible the lives and experiences of LGBTQ people. This guide offers practical information that is essential for governments, researchers, and organizations, including community-based and community-led organizations, that want to conduct law- and policy-relevant research that is credible and useful for improving LGBTQ health and well-being.
Built on more than 20 years of research experience from the Williams Institute at UCLA School of Law, the guide shares what works when creating surveys for LGBTQ communities. It covers how to design questions that reflect people’s experiences, how to make sure the data collected is not already available elsewhere, and how to gather data that speak to contemporary law and policy questions. The approach also helps funders feel confident that their support will lead to data that can drive real change at the local level.
Ultimately, the goal of this guide is to promote methodologically sound, community-centered survey data collection that informs policy and improves LGBTQ health and social equity. By encouraging the use of tested and inclusive measures for sexual orientation, gender identity, health, and socioeconomic indicators, the guide supports the creation of comparable and actionable data across communities and over time. This approach not only enables comparisons between LGBTQ and non-LGBTQ populations but also highlights the diverse needs within LGBTQ communities—including those of women, men, transgender and nonbinary individuals, youth, elders, immigrants, and people of color—so policies and programs can be better tailored to advance equity and well-being at every level.
How this Guide is Structured
Each chapter of this guide is organized to provide principles, approaches, and examples of research with LGBTQ people. The examples come from studies conducted by the Williams Institute, focusing primarily on research in the State of California and Los Angeles County. A glossary of the studies included in this guide can be found in Appendix A.
The chapters are ordered to support researchers in the full process of law- and policy-relevant survey research with LGBTQ communities. They address community engagement, considerations for responsiveness to current issues, question identification and questionnaire development, survey design, implementation, analysis, and research dissemination.
Research based on the principles in this guide can focus on one, some, or all the groups that make up the LGBTQ community. As such, the approaches and examples reflect studies that examine outcomes and experiences based on different combinations of sexual orientation, gender identity, and cross-cutting variables such as age, race, disability status, immigrant experience, and more.
While the principles and approaches in this guide have been written to be relevant for researchers conducting LGBTQ survey research across the U.S., the examples and many of the resources provided primarily come from our experience conducting and supporting research in Los Angeles County and in the State of California, where we are based. For researchers in California, we intend these resources to provide a rich starting point. For researchers in other states and localities, we hope that the examples here will provide some direction for where to look for similar resources where your research study will be implemented.
The guide is written for people with some research experience. It is not intended to be a full research training on all aspects of survey research. When using this guide, it is important that research teams include members with training in research methods who can collaboratively help design and carry out the study. At the same time, we hope that community members newly involved in research will also find this guide a useful introduction. There is a resource list at the end of the guide for those who wish to learn more about conducting survey research.
Notes on Terminology
Sexual orientation and gender identity
While LGBTQ people—or sexual and gender minorities—are often discussed as one community, albeit with multiple subgroups making up the whole, sexual orientation and gender identity are two separate concepts.
Sexual orientation refers to who one is attracted to. Sexual orientation research examines and compares the experiences, priorities, and outcomes of lesbians, gay men, and bisexual (LGB) people, other sexual minorities (e.g., those who identify as queer or asexual), as well as heterosexual, or straight, people. Gender identity refers to the gender someone knows themselves to be. Gender identity research examines and compares the experiences, priorities, and outcomes of transgender, nonbinary, and cisgender people. Transgender, nonbinary, and cisgender people may have any sexual orientation.
Qualitative, quantitative, and mixed-method research studies
Research studies can be divided into qualitative, quantitative, and mixed methods (a combination of quantitative and qualitative) approaches.
Qualitative research is word- and concept-based. It is designed to identify themes, connections, and meanings that people give to their experiences. Qualitative studies collect data using interviews, focus groups, field observations, written materials, pictures, and other similar types of engagement or media. Many qualitative analyses use more than one researcher to closely read the data, compare interpretations, and go through multiple rounds of thematic coding. This can strengthen the analysis by showing internal consistency among researchers. However, other qualitative studies may be carried out by a single, trained researcher.
Quantitative research is number-based. In survey research, quantitative research is designed to turn respondents’ answers into numbers that can be counted and analyzed. For example, counting the number of responses to a question about sexual orientation allows researchers to report how many people from each sexual orientation category took the survey and to analyze whether the answers to some questions differed by sexual orientation. Quantitative survey research generally relies on checkboxes with single- or multiple-choice answers, scales (e.g., from 1 to 10 or never to always), and ranked-choice questions.
When employing a quantitative design, sometimes it is still useful to collect certain data by asking participants to respond qualitatively (e.g., asking an open-ended question and providing space for respondents to share their responses). This may help researchers gain more insight into an experience or topic for which identifying response options ahead of time is challenging or not possible. However, this requires specialized expertise in qualitative research methods to develop, implement, analyze, and interpret the data properly.
This guide focuses on quantitative survey research methods, recognizing that most survey research is quantitative in nature.