Social attitudes towards same-sex sexuality in South Africa (SASS): A qualitative pilot study of black South Africans 2013 - Gauteng, KwaZulu-Natal and Western Cape

Description:
In the pilot study we conducted in-depth interviews to find out about people's beliefs and attitudes towards same-sex sexuality. This helped us to gain an in-depth understanding of attitudes towards same-sex sexuality so that we can develop a comprehensive, integrated and adaptive set of questions that could be used to quantify attitudes toward same-sex sexuality in Africa. We conducted interviews across four major cities, Johannesburg, Pretoria, Cape Town and Durban, with 8 interviews per city. There were a total of 32 interviews, across different age groups, and genders, and located across both urban and rural areas.

The data is embargoed for 36 months, until November 2016.

The transcripts are anonymized so as to cross-out all personal or identifying information related to respondents including names, names of places, occupations, workplaces, etc.

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Abstract:
There is strong opposition to same-sex sexuality in Africa attitudes and research indicates entrenched negative perceptions of same-sex sexuality and tolerance of same-sex identifying persons in South Africa, especially among Black South Africans. However, there are no instruments that reliably assess attitudes towards same-sex sexuality in South Africa, and in Africa more generally. The ultimate purpose of this pilot study is to contribute information towards developing a measure to assess people's attitudes toward same-sex sexuality (homosexuality).

In the pilot study we conducted in-depth interviews to find out about people's beliefs and attitudes towards same-sex sexuality. This helped us to gain an in-depth understanding of attitudes towards same-sex sexuality so that we can develop a comprehensive, integrated and adaptive set of questions that could be used to quantify attitudes toward same-sex sexuality in Africa. We conducted interviews across four major cities, Johannesburg, Pretoria, Cape Town and Durban, with 8 interviews per city. There were a total of 32 interviews, across different age groups, and genders, and located across both urban and rural areas.

Thus, the specific objective of this phase of the research has been: To investigate, examine and interpret current understandings and beliefs of Black South Africans about same-sex sexuality, and how these are evaluated. This work will feed into the broader objective, which is to formulate and test, as part of a medium- to longer-term longitudinal research project across key African countries, an assessment scale consisting of a set of attitude items that will effectively enable scholars to routinely and reliably assess changing attitudes toward same-sex sexuality in the African context.

Variables: Age (range), gender (male and female), location (urban, rural and township), sexuality (heterosexuals), racial category (only black African)