The University at Albany, The State University of New York, 1400 Washington Ave Albany, NY 12222 U.S.A.
Int J Popul Data Sci. 2022 Oct 11;7(1):1722. doi: 10.23889/ijpds.v7i1.1722. eCollection 2022.
Though societal acceptance of same-sex unions has grown, resulting in more inclusive government programs and policies and expanded legal protections, analysts remain uncertain about how to identify and enumerate same-sex households. Presently, the counts available of same-sex households in the United States oftentimes disagree. We show that the origins of these conflicting counts can be traced back to definitional and measurement issues in household surveys. In this study, we demonstrate how counts of same-sex households conflict, mislead, and undermine the goal of accurately representing the population of households with same-sex couples. By providing alternative approaches to counting household with same-sex couples we highlight the challenges in enumerating these households. We draw upon three federal household surveys to demonstrate the inconsistencies in the counts of same-sex households and to illustrate our methods. We argue that our proposed methods lead to more comprehensive and credible counts of households containing same-sex couples.
尽管社会对同性婚姻的接受程度不断提高，导致政府计划和政策更加包容，法律保护也不断扩大，但分析人士仍不确定如何识别和统计同性家庭。目前，美国关于同性家庭的统计数据往往不一致。我们表明，这些相互矛盾的统计数据的起源可以追溯到家庭调查中的定义和测量问题。在这项研究中，我们展示了同性家庭的统计数据是如何产生冲突、误导和破坏准确代表同性伴侣家庭群体这一目标的。通过提供对同性伴侣家庭进行计数的替代方法，我们强调了对这些家庭进行计数的挑战。我们利用三项联邦家庭调查来展示同性家庭计数的不一致性，并说明我们的方法。我们认为，我们提出的方法可以更全面和可信地统计包含同性伴侣的家庭。
