Education-Graded Nonresponse to the Sexual Orientation Question Among Adults in Chile: Item Specificity and Partial Identification Bounds in the 2022 National Household Survey

Introduction: Prevalence and disparity estimates for sexual minority populations depend on respondents answering the sexual orientation item. Item nonresponse is rarely analyzed, almost never outside Anglophone settings, and it remains open whether it is item specific and how far it can move estimates. Methods: This was a cross-sectional analysis of Chile’s 2022 National Socioeconomic Characterization Survey: 2,368 of 93,129 eligible adults (2.5%) did not answer the orientation item, exceeding all disclosed sexual minority respondents (1,972). We compared profiles by disclosure status, fitted response propensity models, tested item specificity against income nonresponse with a stacked model among employed adults, and computed partial identification bounds for three group differences.