Summary
Summary: Lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, intersex, and other sexual and gender minorities (LGBTQI+) people continue to experience disparate and inequitable treatment, which in turn affects outcomes in many areas of everyday life. Although knowledge of these disparities has increased significantly over the past decade, glaring gaps remain, often driven by a lack of reliable data.
To better measure the diversity within LGBTQI+ population, the National Institutes of Health (NIH) asked the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine to convene a committee with expertise in sociology, psychology, public health, medicine, survey methodology, and statistics to review current measures and the methodological issues related to measuring sex as a nonbinary construct, gender identity, and sexual orientation.
The committee’s report offers principles for data collection, guidelines for collecting sex and gender data, and criteria for selecting recommended measures for sexual orientation identity. The report recommends specific questions that can be used within the general adult population to assess sexual orientation identity, sex assigned at birth, and gender identity, and to identify people with transgender experience and intersex traits.
Senior Public Administration Analyst Tara Becker was an editor on this report.
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