Research for a Landmark Moment

Anticipate and document change with your research for a story that will captivate your audience and stay relevant within communities.

Versta Research helped document one of the most profound and important shifts in the American social landscape during the last 50 years: marriage equality for Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender (LGBT) Americans.

One and half years before the U.S. Supreme Court’s landmark 2015 Obergefell vs. Hodges decision, we were commissioned to look at the decisions that same-sex couples faced as barriers to legal marriage began falling state by state.

The research involved careful online sampling and statistical weighting schemes benchmarked against national polling and survey data. It also involved multiple lines of questioning to capture the unique variability among LGBT families―legally married, living together, state-recognized civil unions, same-sex couples, and opposite-sex couples.

Our findings highlighted a mix of romantic idealism and hard-nosed thinking among couples as legal statutes changed. We continued the work into 2015 and 2016. For our research team, this was the tracking study opportunity of a lifetime. If you’ve ever managed a tracker, you know that by Wave 3 you start to wonder “Why bother?” because nothing changes. The changes we saw in this study were monumental.

The research garnered news stories and media attention. It earned us and our research sponsor a spot on the main stage of the Advertising Research Foundation’s annual conference. We presented the work at journalist conferences, research conferences, and more.

You can read more about how we conduct opinion polling, or receive updates about our studies that are featured in the news as part of the Versta Research Newsletter.