Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity in Germany (SOGI-GER) – Bundling Interdisciplinary Expertise

社会、科学和政策对女同性恋、男同性恋、双性恋和跨性别者（LGBT人群）的研究兴趣巨大。在德国，最近同性婚姻合法化使这个话题成为公众关注的焦点。然而，到目前为止，甚至像LGBT人口的规模和所谓的“彩虹家庭”的数量这样的基本问题在很大程度上仍然没有答案。这同样适用于经济学、社会学、心理学和人口学领域的问题，这些问题已经被广泛研究，涉及到异性恋的顺式多数。这些问题的答案对于了解德国LGBT人群及其子女的生活状况以及根据他们的具体需求制定政策至关重要。从科学的角度来看，德国的社会科学在LGBT相关研究方面必须赶上国际水平。目前，大多数基于概率的LGBT人群知识来自美国（威廉姆斯研究所，2016），澳大利亚和荷兰等国家，因此可能对德国的适用性有限。 为了解决德国LGBT人群缺乏高质量数据的问题，德国社会经济小组（SOEP）启动了一个新项目，将900个LGBT家庭纳入小组，其中200-300个是有孩子的家庭。通过对德国人口进行随机电话筛选，选择了男女同性恋、双性恋和变性者家庭。它的面板设计使数据集在国际科学领域非常独特，这些人群的质量概率数据仍然稀缺，特别是与面板设计相结合。该研究网络的目的是联合收割机结合来自德国和国际社会科学不同领域的专业知识，并协调对SOEP-LGBT项目的新颖和独特数据的分析。我们将第一次能够回答有关德国LGBT人群和彩虹家庭生活的紧迫问题。为了不浪费时间，我们建议建立一个网络，一旦这些数据可用，该网络将协调对这些数据的分析。首要的长期目标是通过将多个领域的专业知识汇集到一个跨学科研究网络中，克服德国LGBT相关研究的碎片化。国际专家将参与进来，为德国的案例贡献他们在其他国家积累的知识。我们不仅希望成员们在资助期间进行合作，我们还希望SOGI-GER网络为这些（和其他外部）专家聚集在一起并长期合作奠定基础。

Societal, scientific, and policy interest in the study of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and trans people (LGBT people) is enormous. In Germany, the recent legalization of same-sex marriage has brought the topic into public focus. To date, however, even basic questions like the size of the LGBT population and the number of so-called ‘rainbow families’ remain largely unanswered. The same applies to questions in the fields of economics, sociology, psychology, and demography that have been studied extensively with regard to the heterosexual cis majority. The answers to these questions are critical to understanding the living situations of LGBT people and their children in Germany and to tailoring policies to their specific needs. From a scientific perspective, it is imperative that the social sciences in Germany catch up internationally in LGBT-relevant research. Currently, most of the probability-based knowledge on LGBT people originates from countries like the United States (Williams Institute, 2016), Australia, and the Netherlands and is therefore likely to be of limited applicability to Germany. To address this lack of quality data on LGBT people in Germany, the German Socio-Economic Panel (SOEP) has launched a new project to add 900 LGBT households to the panel, among which 200-300 are households with children. The LGBT households were selected by means of a random telephone screening of the German population. Its panel design makes the dataset highly unique in the international scientific landscape, where quality probability data on these populations are still scarce, particularly in combination with a panel design. The aim of this research network is to combine expertise from different fields of the social sciences in Germany and internationally, and to coordinate the analysis of the novel and unique data from the SOEP-LGBT project. For the first time, we will be able to answer pressing questions regarding the lives of LGBT people and rainbow families in Germany. To waste no time, we propose a network that will coordinate the analysis of these data as soon as they become available. The overarching long-term goal is to overcome the fragmentation of LGBT-related research in Germany by pooling expertise from multiple fields in one interdisciplinary research network. International experts will be brought in to contribute their knowledge generated in other countries to the German case. Not only do we want the members to collaborate for the duration of the funding period; we also want the SOGI-GER networks to lay the foundation for these (and other outside) experts to come together and collaborate long-term.