Is this legal?

melissy40 · September 2010

Last night I did a phone survey that was sponsored by our health insurance company. At the end of the survey, where they ask different questions for classification purposes, one of the last questions was "What is your sexual orientation?" I was so shocked and even said to that guy "Wow, I can't believe you're allowed to ask that." Does anyone know if it is legal to ask this question?

Christine.Louie · September 2010

These types of questions are for demographics and I've never heard that particular one asked. My guess is though that they had an option for "prefer not to answer" or something along those lines? Whether or not there's a legality issue I'm not sure but the intent is that its the respondents choice to volunteer the information or not.

LnA5909 · September 2010

If it is an optional survey, I am pretty sure they can ask anything they want.

jerseygirl81 · September 2010

It's legal, depending on how they intend to use the information. I might be mistaken, but I'm pretty sure the General Social Survey includes that as a standard demographic now. I'm sure if people are uncomfortable answering it then they won't fight about it, and like Christine said, I'm sure there's a "refused/missing" designation. Technically survey researchers can ask whatever they want. When I worked for UC we did health studies (random phone dialing!) on some very personal topics.

jerseygirl81 · September 2010

Oh, I meant to say that it's not legal for them to use the information for anything other than reporting things in an aggregate, unless they told you otherwise. If it's confidential/anonymous/etc then they can't keep that information with other identifiers.

melissy40 · September 2010

Yes, they did offer the option to not answer it. It just totally caught me off guard because I'd never had that asked of me before! Thanks for the feedback.

jengii · September 2010

I would imagine it's fair to ask, but it's not fair to descriminate based on that information.

They can ask your orientation, age, sex, marital status, yadda yadda for statistical purposes, to figure out maybe what optional plans to offer or how to advertise to their best advantage. But they're not allowed to say "this gender gets less coverage over here than that gender," etc.

Is this legal?

Re: Is this legal?

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