Public Support for Gay Rights Across Countries and Over Time

Authors

Affiliations

Byung-Deuk Woo

Pohang University of Science and Technology

Hyein Ko

University of Iowa

Yuehong Cassandra Tai

Pennsylvania State University

Yue Hu

Tsinghua University

Frederick Solt

University of Iowa

Abstract

Objective. Support for gay rights has increased in the publics of many countries over recent decades, but the scholarship on the topic has been hindered by the limited available data on these trends in public opinion. The goal of the Support for Gay Rights (SGR) dataset is to overcome this problem. Method. The SGR dataset is constructed by combining a comprehensive collection of survey data with a latent-variable model to provide annual time-series estimates of public support for gay rights across 118 countries and over as many as 51 years that are comparable across space and time. Results. We show these data perform well in validation tests and demonstrate their potential by replicating the influential but recently questioned finding of Andersen and Fetner (2008) that more income inequality yields less tolerant and supportive attitudes toward gay people. Conclusion. We anticipate that the SGR data will become a crucial source for cross-national, cross-regional, and longitudinal research that improves our understanding of the sources and consequences of public support for gay rights.

Important figures

Figure 1: Countries and Mean Years Observed in Survey Datasets

Figure 2: Countries and Mean Years Observed in Prominent Research

Figure 4: SGR Scores, Most Recent Available Year

Figure 8: Predicting Support for Gay Rights

BibTeX citation

@article{WooKoTaiHuSolt2024,
 author = {Woo, Byung-Deuk and Ko, Hyein and Tai, Yuehong Cassandra and Hu, Yue and Solt, Frederick},
 title = {Public Support for Gay Rights Across Countries and Over Time},
 journal = {Social Science Quarterly},
 volume = {Early View},
 number = {},
 pages = {},
 doi = {https://doi.org/10.1111/ssqu.13478},
 url = {https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/ssqu.13478}
}