What is Our Stats?
Nearly two decades. That’s how long it can take for evidence-based findings to translate into real-world, on-the-ground practices. That’s two decades too long for gay, bi, trans, Two-Spirit and queer (GBT2Q) men – many of whom need more immediate supports and services, especially when it comes to their health.
Open to the public and easy to use, Our Stats is an online database of findings from Canada’s largest and longest running GBT2Q health survey, Sex Now. The tool allows for basic analysis of the data, making it easier for people who don’t have a research background to explore relationships between different variables, such as geographic location, ethnicity, or HIV status. This means community groups and advocates can leverage Our Stats in many ways, including using the information as evidence to apply for funding or to inform the design of programs or services. It’s a great data source for the sort of intelligence not every community organization has the capacity, time or resources to collect themselves.
Our Stats is just one part of a broader strategy that aims to improve health policy and practice for our communities by fast-tracking the impact that research can have.
Participant Recruitment
Our Stats data is made up of information collected for Sex Now, a periodic cross-sectional study of the health and wellbeing of GBT2Q men in Canada. Originally launched in British Columbia by CBRC in 2002, Sex Now went national in 2008. Our Stats currently contains data from four recent versions of Sex Now that were conducted online (2015, 2019, 2020) and in-person at Pride festivals (2018). Future Sex Now data will also be added to the dashboard. Collectively, this data allows for the observation of key health trends within GBT2Q communities over years of dramatic policy change.
Our Stats has recently been updated to include data collected in August-September 2020. The new data offers a unique look at how the COVID-19 pandemic has impacted GBT2Q communities in the last year.
Click here to read more about how Our Stats allows you to “skip the middleman” when it comes to queer and trans research.
The Surveys
- The 2015 Sex Now survey was administered online through social media shares and advertisements (November 2014 to April 2015, sample size: 8,200)
- The 2018 Sex Now survey was administered in-person from booths set up at 15 LGBTQ2S+ Pride Festivals across Canada (May to September 2018, sample size: 3,351)
- The 2019 Sex Now survey was administered online through social media shares and advertisements (November 2019 to February 2020, sample size: 6,200)
- A COVID-19 version of Sex Now was administered online through social media shares and advertisements (August and September 2020, sample size: 2,807)
Data Privacy
The data that underlies our dashboard isn’t just ones and zeros. It represents our identities, experiences, and so much more. That’s why our top priority in offering this service is to maintain the integrity and security of our data. While this imposes some limitations on our users, Our Stats is still the most advanced and innovative strategy to ensure that the stories we share in our data are used to make our lives better and our communities stronger.
- Anonymous Participation - Our data does not include any personal identifiers. Therefore, because a master list of participants is not available, it would be very difficult to link responses back to those who provided them.
- Data Aggregation - Data on our platform is built off of aggregate data that we have summarized and encrypted before linking it to Tableau. This means that specific response patterns cannot be recreated.
- Administrative Censoring - When a stratification of two variables creates a category with less than 10 observations, the data is selectively displayed so that those with unique characteristics are not identified.
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Firewall Security - The data for our platform is secured on firewall-protected servers at the University of Victoria. All visualizations are built using summary extracts that are specially queried by Tableau.
Contact Us
Whether you’re a researcher interested in using our platform to share your data or a knowledge user wanting to take a deep dive into some of the analyses you’ve been exploring on our site, we’d love to hear from you!
Please contact Ben Klassen, CBRC Research Manager, for more information, questions, or feedback about Our Stats.