Anchorage LGBT Discrimination Survey: Final Report by Melissa S. Green was released today by the Anchorage-based nonprofit Identity on behalf of the Alaska LGBT Community Survey Task Force. The Anchorage LGBT Discrimination Survey was conducted in the Municipality of Anchorage, Alaska, from January through March 2011, with 268 lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) respondents included in the final dataset.

The Anchorage LGBT Discrimination Survey was conducted in January through March, 2011. Its key findings on the violence, intimidation, and discrimination experienced in the Municipality of Anchorage by its 268 lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender respondents were previously reported in the preliminary report published in November 2011.

In addition to those key finding, also reproduced as part of the final report’s executive summary, this final report includes:

• Detailed tables upon which the charts included in the preliminary report were based.
• A complete methodology including detailed discussion of sampling selection. Probability (random) sampling of LGBT populations is difficult and prohibitively expensive due to several challenges, which are explained. This survey used nonprobability sampling, which is the most common type used for LGBT populations.
• Complete demographic data for the survey population with, in some cases, comparison with 2010 U.S. Census Bureau data from the American Community Survey for total population of the Municipality of Anchorage.
• Expanded discussion of major findings from the prior Alaska studies One in Ten and Identity Reports; comparisons with those national LGBT studies of anti-LGBT discrimination which are based on probability sampling; and comparison with an extensive national nonprobability transgender discrimination study (over 6000 respondents) covering all 50 states, Washington, DC, and several U.S. territories. Though the present survey is based on nonprobability sampling, its results are similar in many respects to national data, and also demonstrates that sexual orientation and gender identity discrimination are as common Alaska and Anchorage as in the rest of the United States.
• Comparisons with recent data on experience of racism in Anchorage from the Anchorage Community Survey 2009. Experiences of racism are common in Anchorage, especially among blacks, Alaska Natives/American Indians, and Pacific Islanders. Sexual orientation/gender identity bias and discrimination is experienced by LGBT people at comparable levels.
• An examination of case processing data for actual discrimination complaints filed with Anchorage Equal Rights Commission (2002–2009) and Alaska State Commission for Human Rights (2006–2010).
• Findings from national studies conducted by The Williams Institute at UCLA School of Law on the rates of employment discrimination complaints based on sexual orientation/gender identity as compared with complaints for sex discrimination and race/color discrimination in states where sexual orientation and/or gender identity discrimination are prohibited. Typically for those states, complaints to state human rights agencies of employment discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation or gender identity are made at only a slightly lower rate per 10,000 LGBT employees as are complaints of sex discrimination per 10,000 female workers; complaints of discrimination on the basis of race/color tend to be higher than either sexual orientation/gender identity or sex discrimination.
• Respondent comments (edited for respondent confidentiality).

[Download the final report]

Anchorage LGBT Discrimination Survey: Final Report by Melissa S. Green is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License. Permissions beyond the scope of this license may be available at http://www.identityinc.org/.