In honor of Pride Month, we want to highlight LGBTQ+ data and collections at JHU and beyond. These datasets give us a lens through which we can observe and interpret the history of the LGBTQ+ struggle for equality and recognition, while also serving as a tool for progress moving forward.
Many of these data collections come from the ICPSR, the Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research, of which JHU is a member institution. ICPSR is the world’s largest collection of digital social science data and also provides leadership and training in data access, curation, and methods of analysis for the social science research community.
ICPSR Specific Datasets
Generations: A Study of the Life and Health of LGB People in a Changing Society, United States, 2016-2019
Generations was conducted over a five-year period to examine health and well-being across three generations of lesbians, gay men, and bisexuals (LGB). The study explored identity, stress, health outcomes, and health care and services utilization among LGBs in three generations of adults who came of age during different historical contexts.
The TransPop study will be the first national probability sample of transgender individuals in the U.S. and thus will be provide a more accurate and detailed picture of the issues faced by transgender people. The study will provide researchers and policy makers with unbiased estimates about demographics, health outcomes and well-being, and health care needs of the transgender population, which will be crucial for designing evidence-based public health and policy interventions.
This study brings to light what is both patently obvious and far too often dismissed from the human rights agenda. Transgender and gender non-conforming people face injustice at every turn: in childhood homes, in school systems that promise to shelter and educate, in harsh and exclusionary workplaces, at the grocery store, the hotel front desk, in doctors’ offices and emergency rooms, before judges and at the hands of landlords, police officers, health care workers, and other service providers.
The Social Justice Sexuality Project (SJS) is one of the largest national surveys of Black, Latina/o, Asian and Pacific Islander, and multiracial lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) people. With over 5,000 respondents, the final sample includes respondents from all 50 states; Washington, DC, and Puerto Rico; in rural and suburban areas, in addition to large urban areas; and from a variety of ages, racial/ethnic identities, sexual orientations, and gender identities. The purpose of the SJS Project is to document and celebrate the experiences of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) people of color.
Mapping the Gay Guides aims to understand often ignored queer geographies using the Damron Address Books, an early but longstanding travel guide aimed at gay men since the early 1960s. Similar in function to the green books used by African Americans during the Jim Crow era to help identify businesses that catered to black clients in the South, the Damron Guides aided a generation of queer people to identity sites of community, pleasure, and politics. By associating geographical coordinates with each location mentioned within the Damron Guides, MGG provides an interface for visualizing the growth of queer spaces between 1965 and 1980.
LGBTData.com serves as a no-cost, open-access clearinghouse for the collection of sexual orientation & gender identity data and measures. This site, developed by Dr. Randall Sell, a Professor at Drexel University’s School of Public Health, in the Department of Community Health and Prevention, also provides knowledgeable analysis, commentary and expert “how to” information on gathering such data effectively in scientific surveys, questionnaires and studies. Collected and categorized here you will find numerous datasets and links to rich data sources that are essential to LGBT health research, researchers, students, advocates and anyone interested in scientific-based information about LGBT people and populations.
The ICPSR Data Brunch Podcast where Skylar Hawthorne and David Thomas join to discuss three specific surveys of the transgender population in the United States, how best to measure “unseen” populations, and the ideal thickness of French toast.
Jacob Alden Sargent, Associate Director for Instruction and Research for the Center for Digital Liberal Arts at Occidental College, reviews some of the challenges in creating gender-inclusive categories in surveys using real-world examples. This presentation was recorded on September 22, 2020, as part of the 2020 ICPSR Data Fair: Data In Real Life.
With material drawn from hundreds of institutions and organizations, including both major international activist organizations and local, grassroots groups, the documents in this collection present important aspects of LGBTQ life. With material dating back to the sixteenth century, researchers and scholars can examine how sexual norms have changed over time, health and hygiene, the development of sex education, the rise of sexology, changing gender roles, social movements and activism, erotica, and many other interesting topical areas.
Gender Studies Database™ combines NISC’s popular Women’s Studies International and Men’s Studies databases with the coverage of sexual diversity issues. Gender Studies Database covers the full spectrum of gender-engaged scholarship inside and outside academia. Several thousand links to freely available and indexed full-text articles and documents on the Web are available. Source documents include professional journals, conference papers, books, book chapters, government reports, discussion and working papers, theses & dissertations and other sources.
This collection explores changing attitudes towards human sexuality, gender identities and sexual behaviors from the nineteenth to the twenty-first centuries. Investigating the breadth and complexity of human sexual understanding through the work of leading sexologists, sex researchers, organizations and personal accounts.
Looking for Data?
Learn More About Data Services at the Library:
Data Services supports Johns Hopkins researchers, faculty, and students on the Homewood and East Baltimore campuses with a spectrum of resources for finding, accessing, and working with data to make your research and teaching successful. For consultations, training, and archiving services, please reach out via chat (Live chat hours: Monday to Thursday, 12 pm to 5 pm and Friday, 12 pm to 3 pm) or by email.
For more information about our services, visit our website at dataservices.library.jhu.edu.
For more data-related training and workshop please visit our Training and Workshops page.