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Gender Gaps in the Measurement of Public Opinion About Homosexuality in Cross-national Surveys: A Question-Wording Experiment

Large-scale cross-national studies such as the European Social Survey (ESS), the European Values Study (EVS), the International Social Survey Programme (ISSP), the Generations and Gender Programme (GGP), and the World Values Survey (WVS) are valuable sources of information about country-level attitudes toward homosexuality (Fitzgerald, Winstone, & Prestage, 2014; Kuyper, Iedema, & Keuzenkamp, 2013; Takács & Szalma, 2013). These surveys provide data on population attitudes toward homosexuality and can be used to compare attitudes across time and countries. Despite widespread use of these items, most of the surveys have, however, received criticism for ignoring potential differences in attitudes toward gay men versus lesbian women or being gender insensitive (Herek, 2000; Loftus, 2001; Takács & Szalma, 2013; Wellman & McCoy, 2014). For example, the EVS, GGP, and WVS include items to assess attitudes to homosexuality which refer to homosexuality in general and not to gay men and lesbian women as separate groups. Items referring to homosexuality or homosexuals introduce a potential bias, as people mainly think about gay men when confronted with these words (Kite & Whitley, 1996). The ESS avoids this bias by mentioning gay men and lesbian women explicitly in its attitude item. However, although it mentions both gay men and lesbians and thereby avoids the “gay male” bias found in the other surveys, by asking about both genders together, the ESS does not allow for an examination of differences in attitudes toward lesbian women and gay men.

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Posted in: Journal Article Abstracts on 12/26/2017 | Link to this post on IFP |
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