NZ's own gay and lesbian 'Census' results are in, and GayNZ.com is proud to be first to bring you the preliminary data. Lavender Islands is the largest survey conducted of the GLB communities in New Zealand. It is unique in New Zealand, and possibly the world. “I've done a pretty thorough literature search and we've found no other place, no other country that's undertaken a study of this nature,” says Mark Henrickson, a Senior Lecturer in Social Work in the School of Social and Cultural Studies at Massey University, Albany campus, and project leader of the Lavender Islands research team. A number of studies, of course, have concentrated on sexual behaviour, but Lavender Islands – appropriately subtitled “A Portrait Of The Whole Family” – looked at all aspects of GLB lives; sexual attraction, emotional attraction, political beliefs, religious beliefs. “This survey collected an enormous amount of information,” says Henrickson. “There were 2276 respondents and there were 133 items [questions in the survey]. In addition we also gave people an opportunity to respond and to write in comments, and we have over 150 A4 pages of written comments. “One of the things that I wanted to do now was to make sure that we gave the LGB communities a chance to hear what they gave to us, so that we're reporting this information back to them as soon as we possibly can.” Our communities surely will not be the only ones interested in these results. The Maxim Institute, starved of quality research data on LGB people, will no doubt want to peruse these results to see how they can be used (or dismissed) to counter GLB-friendly legislation in Parliament. The right-wing use of the data doesn't bother Henrickson. “Interestingly, the more conservative you are the more power that this study actually will have for you,” he says. “Lesbian and gay communities tend to overestimate our proportion in the general population, and conservative communities tend to underestimate. With a large study like this, we are a greater proportion of that smaller percentage, so I'm very hopeful that this study will contribute to the discussions.” And here at GayNZ.com, we're proud to be able to bring you that information first. Because of the volume of data, and the fairly recent cut-off date for submissions (July 15), Henrickson is keen to point out that these results are only preliminary, and are subject to further examination. (NB: Percentages have been rounded to the nearest whole number) 1. WHO RESPONDED TO THE SURVEY AND WHERE DID THEY COME FROM? Both men and women responded to Lavender Islands in fairly equal numbers, with slightly more men (55%) than women (45%). The average age of respondents for both sexes was 38. Responses were received from all over the country, but the majority came from Auckland (48%) and other urban centres. Just over 80% of respondents were from the main centres or their surrounding areas; namely Auckland, Wellington, Christchurch, Dunedin. Henrickson says this is not surprising. “It's pretty clear that gay and lesbian people do tend to migrate where there are greater chances to meet other gay and lesbian people, to set up their lives…we believe that we were very geographically representative.” In terms of race, 86% were European, 8% Maori, 3.5% Asian and 2% Pacific. 11% of respondents, however, did not report ethnicity. The vast majority (79%) were born in New Zealand, followed by the UK (11%) and Australia (3%). The gays and lesbians in the survey reported high levels of income when compared with New Zealanders overall. The average level of income, as recorded by Statistics New Zealand, is just over $28,000 per annum. Only 32% of survey respondents were on $30,000 or less. 19% earned over $70,000 per year. There were gender differences, although not what you might expect - in almost all income brackets $70,000 and below, women were bigger earners than men. Above that, however, men outstripped the women by healthy amounts. The survey also showed a high level of educational achievement among respondents. 74% had undertaken some form of tertiary education, from diplomas to degrees. Women also outshone men in the highest levels of education, with significantly more women achieving undergraduate and postgraduate degrees. Data collected on occupations showed that most respondents were in senior admin or management positions (17%), were students (12%), in the education sector (10%), or writers and artists (7%). Interestingly, nearly 6% of respondents had served in one of the New Zealand armed forces or police. 2. COMING OUT Chris Banks - 5th August 2004