TABLE 1.
Sexual Minority Orientation Classification Based on Follow-up Responses About Sexual Minority Orientation Among Adults Who Answered, “Something Else” or “I Don’t Know the Answer” Initially (N = 454)
| Respondents by Sexual Minority Orientation Classification, n (%) | ||
|---|---|---|
| Response to the Follow-up Question | Sexual Minority (N = 237) | Other (N = 217) |
| “Gay/lesbian” | < 10* (< 4) | |
| “Bisexual” | < 10* (< 4) | |
| “Identify with another label” | 16 (7) | |
| “Transgender, transsexual, or gender variant”† | 12 (5) | |
| “In the process of figuring it out” | 88 (37) | |
| “Do not think of myself as having sexuality” | 29 (12) | |
| “Do not use labels” | 65 (27) | |
| “Something else” | 16 (7) | |
| “Don’t understand the words” | 97 (45) | |
| Refused | 69 (32) | |
| Either “don’t know” ( > 10) or “straight, that is, not lesbian or gay” (n < 10) | 51 (24) | |
*
Cells <10 were suppressed for confidentiality.
†
Although these options refer to gender identity rather than sexual orientation, they were given in response to a question about sexual orientation. Thus we, like Dahlhamer et al,17 used them to infer that such respondents were more likely to identify as sexual minorities than as not sexual minority. Although this conclusion is far from certain, the results are not sensitive to this classification decision.