Overview of the 35-year U.S. National Longitudinal Lesbian Family Study and Its 92% Retention Rate

Abstract

The U.S. National Longitudinal Lesbian Family Study was initiated in 1986 to follow a cohort from the first generation of planned lesbian-parent families in which the children were conceived through donor insemination. Since that time, 92% of the families in the original cohort are still involved in the study. During the most recent wave (6th) for which data gathering was completed in October 2017, 213 family members (135 parents and 78 index offspring) participated. The evolution of the study over 35 years and the strategies used to retain participants are discussed. Salient among these strategies were timing the data collection, meeting participants in their homes, creating a study identity, and updating contact information annually. Having the same principal investigator from the beginning to the present provided consistency. The study also benefited from cultural shifts over the past three decades that the researchers and participants could not have anticipated at the outset—co-parent adoptions, domestic partnerships, civil unions, and marriage equality. Despite the limitations of convenience sample surveys, there are lessons to be learned from the methodological strategies that the researchers employed to keep the cohort intact.