Asking about Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity in Social Surveys in Japan: Findings from the Osaka City Residents’ Survey and Related Preparatory Studies

Abstract

With the recent rise of public interest in sexual and gender minority populations across societies, asking about sexual orientation and gender identity (SOGI) in social surveys has become increasingly important. However, most studies on the measurement of SOGI focus on North American and Western European countries. Therefore, it is currently difficult to evaluate whether the findings from these previous studies are applicable to countries with distinct legal, religious, and cultural contexts regarding sexual and gender minorities compared to Western societies. This paper focuses on Japan and summarizes the findings from focus group discussions and pilot surveys as well as the preliminary results of the Osaka City Residents' Survey, which is one of the first population-based surveys that include SOGI questions in Japan. It also makes comparisons with previous studies in the United States, illustrating the significance of studying the measurement of SOGI outside of the United States.

Stability and relevance of marriage desires: Importance of age norms and partnering opportunities

“…If so, our results about any relevance of marriage desires would be conservative ones, because the lack of practical implications of marriage desires among same‐sex oriented people would only weaken our estimates. Moreover, although there is no valid data on the proportion of same‐sex oriented people in Japan, a study using a representative sample from Osaka, a major city in Japan, finds just 2.1% of the respondents who identified themselves as gay, lesbian, or bisexual (Hiramori & Kamano, 2020). This number is somewhat comparable to the percentages of same‐sex couples reported in Britain, United States, and Taiwan, which range from 2% to 5% (Lin et al, 2019).…”

Understanding Sexual Orientation Identity, Sexual/Romantic Attraction, and Sexual Behavior beyond Western Societies: The Case of Japan

“…"bisexual [those who have sexual/romantic feelings for both men and women]," "asexual [those who do not have sexual/romantic feelings for anyone]," "Don't want to decide, haven't decided," and "I do not understand the question." Given that the use of the choices such as "other" and "unsure" is not recommended (SMART 2009), we include "Don't want to decide, haven't decided" for those whose sexual orientation identity is questioning, queer, or other sexual minority categories, and "I do not understand the question" for supposedly heterosexual respondents who do not understand the term "heterosexual" (see Hiramori and Kamano (2020) for findings from the focus groups and the pilot survey on asking about sexual orientation in population-based surveys in the Japanese context).…”

“…and "exclusively women." Because this survey is a mail survey and response options cannot be altered by the respondent's gender, we list "I have never been sexually attracted to either men or women" as the first choice so that careless respondents who are men, for example, do not mistakenly choose "exclusively men," which may inflate the proportion of men who are sexually attracted to men (Hiramori and Kamano 2020). For the purpose of this analysis, we use lifetime sexual attraction to broaden the scope of non-heterosexual sexual attraction as much as possible.…”

“…Unlike other social surveys that ask about sexual orientation, such as the National Survey of Family Growth (Poston and Baumle 2010), the measures of sexuality-related questions employed in this survey are designed to be able to capture the lack of sexual attraction and romantic attraction, in addition to the lack of sexual behavior. Moreover, the question for sexual orientation identity includes categories such as "asexual," "Don't want to decide, haven't decided," and "I do not understand the question," where the last two are utilized to prevent respondents from using "other" as a choice (see Hiramori and Kamano (2020) for more information on the preparatory studies to ask about sexual orientation in representative surveys in the Japanese context). In examining the intersections between different dimensions of sexual orientation, we particularly focus on (1) the general description of dimensions of sexual orientation by gender, (2) patterns of same-sex sexuality, and (3) the asexual spectrum.…”

Cross-sectional survey of education on LGBT content in medical schools in Japan

“…When individuals who identified as asexual were included, the figure was 3.3%. 1 Social discrimination and health disparities against LGBT people have also been reported in Japan. Fifty-eight per cent of LGBT people have been bullied in school, 2 and 61.4% of transgender people have reported difficulties finding a job because of their gender identity.…”