Prevalence of homosexuality
Estimates of the prevalence of homosexuality vary considerably with the definition of what "homosexuality" actually is. Some consider its most important aspect to be sexual behavior between members of the same sex ("homosexual acts"), while others stress inclination or orientation. Three primary definitions are same-sex sexual activity, same-sex sexual inclination, and same-sex sexual identity. These may be further divided.For example, same-sex sexual behavior may occur among people who do not identify themselves as "homosexual" (see gay sex and MSM). This is common in macho cultures which distinguish between the "active" and the "passive" sexual partner, where the "active" partner does not usually consider himself to be homosexual.
Conversely, persons who identify as same-sex loving are not always sexually active, whether due to necessity, circumstances, or personal choice. Similarly, a person may have same-sex sexual thoughts or inclinations without ever acting on them or regarding themselves as having a same-sex sexual orientation. All of these might fall under the umbrella of "homosexuality", and may or may not be included in research surveys. A survey that counts only same-sex sexual contact, for example, will exclude all celibate homosexuals.
Another significant distinction can be made between what medical statisticians call incidence and prevalence. For example, even if two studies agree on a common criterion for considering someone to be homosexual, one study might regard this as applying to any person who has ever met this criterion, whereas another might only regard them as being so if they had done so during the year of the survey.
As a result of these fundamental problems, the results and conclusions of studies on homosexuality are invariably challenged. Indeed, unclear definitions, social stigmas, and political influences make it essentially impossible to accurately determine the number of "homosexuals" in a given society. In general, most research agrees that the number of people who have had multiple same-gender sexual experiences is fewer than the number of people who have had a single such experience, and that the number of people who identify themselves as exclusively homosexual is fewer than the number of people who have had multiple homosexual experiences.
At one extreme, the Kinsey report (1948) reported that 37% of men in the U.S. had achieved orgasm through contact with another male after adolescence. However, Kinsey's work was based on a population sample that was likely to have been biased and consequently his results have been disputed. Since Kinsey, a number of large-scale cross-cultural studies, involving tens of thousands of subjects selected at random, have consistently reported a percentage lower than Kinsey's estimate. For example,
- Smith's 1991 analysis of National Opinion Research Center data [1] states that 5.9% of sexually active males had had a male sexual partner since age 18, but that "since age 18 less than 1% are gay and 4+% bisexual".
- A 1998 survey by Christopher Bagley and Pierre Tremblay gave a figure of 15.3% of men who "reported being homosexual to some degree" including "overlapping homosexual (5.9%) and/or bisexual (6.1%) self-identification". [1]
- The NHSLS survey reported an incidence of male homosexuality of 4.9% "over the last 18 years" [1]
See also
Footnote
[1]: Survey responses are often conditioned by the desire not to express opinions or supply information of which the respondent suspects society or the questioner may not approve. Revealing one's sexual orientation may well fall into this category, so affecting the accuracy of some surveys and under-estimating the actual scale of homosexuality. A similar phenomenon affects survey data on minority religions, on personal views on controversial matters such as abortion, and on degrees of political support for a political party. (Classic examples of this are not 'admitting' support in surveys in the late 1990s for the British Conservative Party, or controversial parties like the Democratic Unionist Party and Sinn Féin in Northern Ireland, etc. with such parties getting a higher vote in the privacy of a ballot box than reported in surveys.) The NORC data has been criticised because the original design sampling techniques were not followed, and depended upon direct self report regarding masturbation and same sex behaviors. (For example, the original data in the early 1990s reported that approximately 40% of adult males had never masturbated--a finding inconsistent with some other studies.)