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June 15, 2025
The American Trends Panel survey methodology
Overview
Data in this report comes from Wave 160 of the American Trends Panel (ATP), Pew Research Center’s nationally representative panel of randomly selected U.S. adults. The survey was conducted Jan. 8-19, 2025, among a sample of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer (LGBTQ) U.S. adults. A total of 3,959 eligible, LGBTQ adults responded out of 8,951 who were sampled, for a survey-level response rate of 62% (AAPOR RR3). This includes 585 respondents from the ATP, 2,297 from the SSRS Opinion Panel (OP) and 1,077 from the Ipsos Knowledge Panel (KP).
The cumulative response rate accounting for nonresponse to the recruitment surveys and attrition is 1%. The break-off rate among eligible panelists who logged on to the survey and completed at least one item is 2%. The margin of sampling error for the full sample of 3,959 respondents is plus or minus 2.2 percentage points.
SSRS and Ipsos conducted the surveys for Pew Research Center. SSRS conducted the ATP and OP surveys via online (n=2,821) and live telephone (n=62) interviewing. Ipsos conducted the KP survey online only. Interviews were conducted in both English and Spanish.
To learn more about the ATP, read “About the American Trends Panel.”
Panel recruitment
Since 2018, the ATP has used address-based sampling (ABS) for recruitment. A study cover letter and a pre-incentive are mailed to a stratified, random sample of households selected from the U.S. Postal Service’s Computerized Delivery Sequence File. This Postal Service file has been estimated to cover 90% to 98% of the population. Within each sampled household, the adult with the next birthday is selected to participate. Other details of the ABS recruitment protocol have changed over time but are available upon request. Prior to 2018, the ATP was recruited using landline and cellphone random-digit-dial surveys administered in English and Spanish.
A national sample of U.S. adults has been recruited to the ATP approximately once per year since 2014. In some years, the recruitment has included additional efforts (known as an “oversample”) to improve the accuracy of data for underrepresented groups. For example, Hispanic adults, Black adults and Asian adults were oversampled in 2019, 2022 and 2023, respectively.
Sample design
The overall target population for this survey is noninstitutionalized persons ages 18 and older living in the United States who describe themselves as lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender or queer. All active ATP members who had previously indicated that they were gay, lesbian, bisexual or transgender were invited to participate in this wave.
The ATP was supplemented with samples from SSRS’s Opinion Panel (OP) and Ipsos’ Knowledge Panel (KP). For the OP sample, all active panel members who previously described themselves as any of the following were invited to participate: asexual, bisexual, gay or lesbian, intersex, nonbinary, pansexual, queer, same gender loving, transgender or two-spirit. For the KP sample, all panel members were invited who had previously indicated that they were gay, lesbian or bisexual and married or living with a partner, or who previously indicated that they were transgender, nonbinary or that their sex assigned at birth on their original birth certificate differed from their current gender identity.
At the start of the survey, potentially eligible respondents were asked a series of screening questions to confirm their eligibility to complete the survey. For the ATP and OP samples, respondents were considered eligible if they indicated they were lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender or queer. Respondents from the KP sample were considered eligible if they indicated that they were married or living with a partner and lesbian, gay or bisexual, or that they were transgender (regardless of marital status).
Weighting
The survey was weighted in a process that accounts for multiple stages of sampling and nonresponse that occur at different points in the panel survey process. First, each panelist begins with a base weight that reflects their probability of recruitment into the panel. Base weights for OP and KP respondents were provided by SSRS and Ipsos respectively. Respondents from each sample were assigned to one of three sample groups and their base weights were combined and scaled to account for the sample design:
- Transgender
- Not transgender, and married or living with a partner and lesbian, gay or bisexual
- All other lesbian, gay, bisexual or queer
The combined base weights were calibrated to align with the following estimated benchmarks for the population of U.S. LGBTQ adults: Sample group, lesbian/gay/bisexual status, gender, marital status, age, education, race/ethnicity, years living in the U.S. (among foreign born), volunteerism, voter registration, frequency of internet use, religious affiliation, party affiliation, census region and metropolitan status.
Because there are no official benchmarks for this population, weighting parameters were estimated using the eligible respondents to Wave 160 from the ATP sample. First, all ATP respondents who completed the screening questions were weighted to match the full set of ATP members who were sampled on the following dimensions: age, gender, education, race/ethnicity, years living in the U.S. (among foreign-born), volunteerism, voter registration, frequency of internet use, religious affiliation, party affiliation, census region and metropolitan status. These weights were then used to calculate weighting parameters based on ATP respondents to Wave 160 who were screened as eligible.
In a final step, the weights were trimmed at the 1st and 99th percentiles to reduce the loss in precision stemming from variance in the weights. Sampling errors and tests of statistical significance take into account the effect of weighting.
The following table shows the unweighted sample sizes and the error attributable to sampling that would be expected at the 95% level of confidence for different groups in the survey.
Sample sizes and sampling errors for other subgroups are available upon request. In addition to sampling error, one should bear in mind that question wording and practical difficulties in conducting surveys can introduce error or bias into the findings of opinion polls.
For detailed information about our survey methodology, refer to the full survey methodology.
American Community Survey methodology
The analyses of couples’ region of residence, education, employment, income and family characteristics come from the American Community Survey (ACS). The ACS is the largest household survey in the United States, with a sample of more than 3 million addresses. Collected by the U.S. Census Bureau since 2001, it covers the topics previously included in the long form of the decennial census. The ACS estimates the size and characteristics of the nation’s resident population.
The ACS microdata files used for this analysis were provided by the Integrated Public Use Microdata Series (IPUMS) from the University of Minnesota. IPUMS standardizes variable names and coding across years as much as possible, making it easier to analyze the data over time.
In examining where couples live, we analyzed couples of all ages. In examining education, we analyzed couples where the older partner was age 25 to 64. In examining employment, income, and family characteristics, we analyzed couples where the older partner was age 18 to 64.
The ACS does not capture all cohabiting relationships. The ACS only identifies cohabiting partnerships that include the head of household. The household head is the person in whose name the home is owned, being bought or rented. Most cohabiting relationships do involve the household head. To remain consistent across married and cohabiting relationships, we focus on marriages and cohabitations that involve only the head and their spouse or unmarried partner.
Another census data product, the Current Population Survey Annual Social and Economic Supplement (ASEC), does capture all cohabitors. In the 2024 ASEC, 93% of all cohabiting adults are either the household head or the unmarried partner of the head.
Adjusted household income for this report follows the methodology from Pew Research Center’s previous work on the American middle class.
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