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The HRC Foundation contracted with Lake Research Partners to understand the lived experiences of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people in large U.S. workplaces. The research, conducted from March through August of 2008, consisted of online and in-person focus groups and a series of oneon-one telephone interviews, followed by a national survey of LGBT employees. QUALITATIVE RESEARCH Focus Groups The qualitative research explored issues, experiences and attitudes toward workplace climate among more than 70 diverse employees recruited from YouGov/Polimetrix’s panel of people in the United States. A total of 14 focus groups — 11 online and three in-person — were conducted from March through May 2008. To recruit hard-to-reach LGBT employees with varied professional experience, geographic location and economic sector, 11 of the 14 groups were conducted online. Focus group participants were screened to meet the specifications of each group and to ensure diversity of participants within each group with respect to sexual orientation, gender identity, age, race/ethnicity, region, industry, union membership and employer size. While the focus of this research is on large employers with 1,000 or more employees, the findings include participants from businesses of all sizes. Non-LGBT workers were also screened using an additional metric of “temperatures” to gauge attitudes on social groups and hot button political subjects in order to better understand their varying perspectives on working with LGBT people; workers were rated on a continuum from hostile (0) to strong (100), and those rated within 30 to 70 were selected to participate. All 14 focus groups lasted approximately 90 minutes and were facilitated by professionally trained moderators. In-person focus group participants received financial stipends, and online focus group participants received YouGov/Polimetrix points redeemable for rewards for their time. Some attributions to the quotes selected from focus group participants that appear in this report lack certain identifying information because it was not provided to the HRC Foundation.