Australia's LGBTIQ Research Data Landscape

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 adverse social and economic outcomes relative to their cisgendered heterosexual counterparts. Understanding the LGBTIQ data landscape 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 thatcollection 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.