Study title

United Kingdom

Individual

We set initial quotas of 200 lesbian, 200 gay men and 100bisexual responses within our target population of 500 LGBs, plus a comparator of 500 heterosexuals. A standard omnibus weighting was applied to our screened sample to ensure this was representative of the population (researchers wanting further details should contact the uthors). The fieldwork for our survey took 44 waves over six months and was deployed twice weekly. A total of 73,303 people were screened to obtain a final sample of 1,222 respondents (500 LGB and722 heterosexuals). This large sampling frame ooover 73,000 was necessary because of the challenges weencountered in attracting lesbian respondents to take partin the survey. The final sample consists of 722 heterosexuals,147 gay men, 122 lesbians, 151 bisexuals (40 men and 111women), 24 people who labelled themselves ‘other sexualorientation’ and 56 who labelled themselves ‘unsure’.In our qualitative data collection we We set a target of 6-8 interviews with LGBs in each of 6 organisations. We used intranet sites,poster campaigns and LGB networks to gain accessto our interviewees. We deliberately did not canvassfor interviewees with direct experiences of bullying ordiscrimination, but instead promoted participation inour research under the banner ‘Tell us about the ups anddowns of being LGB at work’. As a result of this approach weconducted 50 semi-structured interviews (25 men and 25 women) in the six case study organisations.To explore how heterosexual members of staff in ourcase study organisations view and make sense ofnon-heterosexuality and the presence of LGBs in theworkplace, we carried out 15 focus groups, involvingaround 75 employees. To facilitate discussion andinvolvement, we introduced three scenarios describingtypical experiences of LGBs, one lesbian, one gay andone bisexual. None of these scenarios were based on theorganisations our focus groups came from. The scenarioscontained a degree of ambiguity to purposefully stimulatediscussion.