What you know depends on how you know: a queer approach for measuring sexual fluidity

This study examines how knowledge about sexuality is shaped by measurement approaches. Integrating theories about sexual fluidity in psychology and demography with sociological work on situational fluidity, we argue that what researchers claim to know about fluidity, including the forms it can take, depends on how they study it. A sample of 52 LGBTQ+-identified individuals who completed a brief structured demographic questionnaire prior to an in-depth interview allows for a within-study comparison of how the same respondents described their sexuality across different modalities of data collection. Our findings highlight inconsistencies between what participants wrote in a survey and how they verbalised their experiences in an interview. These differences can influence how researchers understand fluidity by variably accenting attractions, behaviours, or identities; fixed or flexible categories; familiar or emergent labels; residual 'other' classifications; or situationally adaptive responses. Inspired by queer methods, we argue that these apparent inconsistencies do not always pose measurement challenges; they can also serve as generative sites for theorising sexual fluidity.