Hi Guys I am a 4th student in Waterford Institute of Technology.  As my final year thesis I have chosen to carry out a study looking to examine the dynamics and qualities of parental social support from the perspective of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) individuals to see if it affects sexual behaviour.

I ask of all you LGBT people out there to give me a dig out answer the questionnaire and pass it on to friends, family, co-workers, associates etc. 

Much appreciated

http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/surveylgbt

Done

good luck with it 

I got as far as not being able to spell 'adolescence' before becoming annoyed with this questionnaire.

@****face: I appreciate your efforts to aid the LGBT community with your research. However, I fear that, like a lot of the LGB initiatives, you may have appended the T as an afterthought and I wish to offer some advice that might make things a bit more accessible to the Trans community in Ireland.

When one first engages the trans community, there is a wee bit of confusion around words, as certain portions of the trans community have reclaimed, redefined and refined certain words and concepts to within an inch of their life. Such words are: gender, sex and sexuality. To clarify, I'll give a very broad (and slightly debatable, depending on who you talk to) summary of the concepts.

Trans folk like to draw a dividing line between sex and gender in various ways, but none of them use the two words interchangeably.

Some camps define sex as the physical body, and gender as the self-perception of the  role in society when broadly categorised into male and female. Other camps say that gender is what sex your brain thinks it is. These camps believe that it is this difference between sex and gender that would define a trans person. Bear in mind that a lot of adolescent trans folk, who are dealing with puberty on top of any other identity issues they may be coping with, can be really pedantic about this.

Another camp believes that sex is something you have, and gender is your identity.

Note that all of these camps view gender as an identity. The definition from the last camp also brings us rather nicely onto sexuality.

Sexuality is what broad chunk of the population you're attracted to. The words 'gay', 'straight' and 'bisexual' basically determine if you like people of the same or different sex or gender, or if you are attracted to more than one group.

Despite what some people initially think, your gender identity and your sexuality are two different things. They are quite closely related, and both form parts of your identity, but it is possible to simultaneously be trans and bi for instance, just like it's possible to be cis-gendered (a term that's currently en vogue for "not transgendered") and gay.

The reason I point this out to you is that devising a questionnaire that is sensitive to the intended population is a difficult task, but is one that will encourage participation from that community, and I'd hate to see a lack of participation from an already unrepresented group who will constantly wonder about the motives of the question, "What is your gender?" and see no ability to indicate their sexuality (separate from their gender identity) from the on the form. It generally indicates a lack of background research, or knowledge of the basic issues, which could lead to a skewed result that can easily lead to bad, and potentially damaging, decisions being made on our behalf, with no consultation, by 'allies'.

The above is just scratching the surface, but the understanding may help you to produce better results.

Good luck with the survey,
Aoife