ABSTRACT
Lesbians, gay men, bisexual men and women, and transgender people make up a very heterogeneous “community.” Despite the fact that many lesbian and gay (LG) people do not live in a major metropolitan center (e.g., New York, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Chicago), much of the available data on lesbians and gay men is drawn from urban samples in predominantly metropolitan areas (Cahill, South, & Spade, 2000). Yet using such samples leads to problems of representativeness and generalizability, a fact not always acknowledged by researchers (Sullivan & Losberg, 2003). More recently, some social scientists have reminded their readers of the realistic limits of their samples, including their generalizability, particularly when members of marginalized and stigmatized populations are being studied. These limitations are further magnified by the dearth of research conducted in rural and smaller urban areas, and by the fact that population density and/or home location are rarely addressed in research on LG populations. With limited data on the lives of LG people residing in such areas, information gleaned from nonprobability samples from major metropolitan centers is often used to guide program development and social service outreach in less densely populated areas; it is presumed that such research adequately reflects the lives and needs of all LG people.
