Data on the Margins: Topics and Concepts in LGBTIQ+ Data

LGBTIQ+ people are considered a ‘hidden population’ by demographers. Data about this population is missing not only due to a lack of awareness on behalf of those collecting data, but also due to political resistance, laws that criminalize and persecute non-cisgender and non-heterosexual people , stigma and discrimination (Colaço & Watson-Grant, 2021). Data gaps such as this one exist due to unequal power relations (D’Ignazio & Klein, 2020). They both perpetuate and result in a dominance of male, white, hetero, and cis perspectives in how we make sense of and interact with the world. A first step towards identifying and closing data gaps is to take stock of data that already exists. In our project “Data on the Margins”, we identified all LGBTIQ+ datasets held in European Social Science Data Archives. In August 2023, 66 such datasets were held by 8 of the 34 CESSDA member and partner archives (https://doi.org/10.7802/2650). By mapping all applied keywords to the CESSDA Topic Classification, we were able to determine which topics were strongly covered in the data, and which received only little or no coverage. Thus, we found that while many studies were assigned keywords from the CESSDA topic classes ‘Health’, ‘Social Groupings and Stratification’ and ‘Society and Culture’, within these topics such as reproductive and mental health, elderly, youth, ethnic groups, migration and disability were hardly covered. In addition, keywords were frequently paired with negatively connoted terms such as ‘discrimination’ or ‘bullying’, suggesting damage- or deficit-centered approaches. To corroborate these findings, we have begun analyzing study documentation and instruments, e.g. questionnaires, for topics covered and concepts employed. We will present initial findings of this step along with the results of the keyword analysis.