Patterns of Bisexuality in America

Intersections between Sexual Identity, Sexual Attraction, and Sexual Behavior among a Nationally Representative Sample of American Men and Women

“…This is compared to just 6.4% of women and 3.6% of men age 15 -45 who self-identify as either gay or bisexual. The finding that more men and women report same-sex sexual experience or same-sex attraction than report gay or bisexual identity is consistent with past research (e.g., Compton et al 2015;Gates 2011;Korchmaros et al 2013), and there may be many reasons for this. One possible reason is fear of discrimination, as much research provides causal evidence of discrimination against out LGB individuals when they seek employment (Mishel 2016;Tilcsik 2011) and apply for housing (Friedman et al 2013).…”

“…I agree with Compton et al (2015): the specific measure of sexuality used in research on the LGB community should depend on the study's research question. After all, using a sexual behavior measure may be most appropriate for studies interested in examining sexually transmitted infections among sexual minorities, while it may be more appropriate to use a combination of sexual orientation measures for researchers interested in political and social change (Compton et al 2015). Thus, social scientists interested in this topic should let their research question drive their measure of sexual orientation, while being transparent and clear about the measure they use to indicate LGB identity, and address any potential limitations of their measure of choice.…”

Intersections between Sexual Identity, Sexual Attraction, and Sexual Behavior among a Nationally Representative Sample of American Men and Women

“…This is compared to just 6.4% of women and 3.6% of men age 15-45 who self-identify as either gay or bisexual. The finding that more men and women report same-sex sexual experience or same-sex attraction than report gay or bisexual identity is consistent with past research (e.g., Compton et al 2015;Gates 2011;Korchmaros et al 2013), and there may be many reasons for this. One possible reason is fear of discrimination, as much research provides causal evidence of discrimination against out LGB individuals when they seek employment (Mishel 2016;Tilcsik 2011) and apply for housing (Friedman 2013).…”

“…al 2012;Igartua et. al 2009;Kinsey et al 1953;Laumann et al 1994), and these disjunctures have been shown to change research results, depending on the measure of sexual orientation used (Bostwick et al 2010;Compton et al 2015;Korchmaros et al 2013;Mize 2016).…”

“…Past studies based in the U.S. have examined patterns between sexual identity, attraction, and behavior as well (e.g., Laumann et al 1994). The more recent studies to do so have either used smaller and unrepresentative samples, such as adolescents/young adults from one Southwestern city (Korchmaros et al 2013), young women (Diamond 2008), men from New York City (Pathela et al 2006), or have focused on bisexuality (Compton et al 2015), asexuality (Poston and Baumle 2010), or on health risks for the LGB community (Bostwick et al 2010). Two reports from the Center for Disease Control's National Health Statistics Department use nationally representative data of the U.S. to give a cursory glance at the links between sexual behavior, attraction and identity (Chandra et al 2011;Copen et al 2016); however, these reports do not go beyond mere descriptive tables, and with their focus on heterosexual behavior, they are not able to list values in many figures pertaining to non-heterosexual identity, same-sex sexual behavior, or different levels of same-sex attraction due to small sample size.…”