PRIDE SURVEY
Knowing the population one serves is key to needs assessment and to ensuring the relevance, usefulness, and impact of our work.
Community Portrait A statistical analysis of the Boston Pride Surveys 2015-2016 Introduction
Methods
In January 2015, Boston Pride established its first community survey. The purpose of the “Pride Winter Survey” was twofold: first, to collect demographic data from the population that Boston Pride serves, and, second, to elicit community feedback on existing Pride programming and community needs. Two hundred and fifty-two members of the queer community responded to this survey over the period January 1 to March 1. Because of the healthy level of response, and of the quality of the data gathered, Boston Pride decided to issue a “Pride Summer Survey” between July 1 and September 1, which received 130 responses. The Summer Survey collected, once again, demographic data, as well as feedback on the 2015 Boston Pride Week celebration. A second “Pride Winter Survey” was distributed in 2016, between February 1 and April 1, in which 142 members of our community took part.
The demographics section of the Pride Surveys comprised eleven questions covering a wide range of life characteristics relevant to an organization like Boston Pride. We selected a questionnaire format with pre-selected answers (as well as “n/a” or “other” options) to simplify and to accelerate both data capture and analysis. These questions and the multiple-choice answers employed standard language used by the Pew Research Center, GLAAD, and the Transgender Law Center, in order to reduce bias and ensure coverage of non-binary identities, to leverage best practices, and to allow for our data to be compared to other samples. No personal identifiable information (PII) was collected during this effort. PII typically includes first and last names, full date of birth (our questionnaire only asked for birth year to identify age group), social security number, etc., which were not included in the surveys. Boston Pride tested the questionnaire through in-person, paperbased surveys during the Boston Pride Festival held on June 14, 2014. A team of Boston Pride volunteers walked through the Festival with clipboards and a paper-based copy of the eleven questions. They conducted face-to-face, one-on-one interviews with festival attendees. Of primary importance during this data collection exercise was the qualitative feedback provided by respondents regarding the duration of the survey collection, the complexity of the language used in the questions, and the variety, coverage and pertinence of the pre-selected answers. Based on this exercise, where dozens of questionnaires were completed throughout the day, and based on the experience of our team of volunteers, the questions and pre-selected answers were slightly amended to the final set listed in Table 1. Note that a standard “prove you are not a robot” question was also inserted into the questionnaire. The Pride Surveys were administered through a web-based interface. The surveys were advertised through Boston Pride’s website, email newsletter, and social media posts throughout the duration of the data collection periods (Table 2).
Purpose We report here on the demographic data collected in the aforementioned surveys: Knowing the population one serves is key to needs assessment and to ensuring the relevance, usefulness, and impact of our work. While specialized surveys are regularly conducted in the LGBT community, they typically focus on very general aspects of respondents’ behavior (e.g., consumer habits, travel interests) and capture few demographic data points. To our knowledge, the surveys produced by Boston Pride are the only examples of systematic and specific demographic data collections in our region, focusing on the LGBT community.
104 | Boston Pride 2016
