What demographic or behavioral data do national surveys collect alongside questions about specific practices like pegging?

1. Why surveys collect demographic and behavioral “backstory”

Federal and academic surveys build demographic modules to let researchers describe who reports a behavior and to adjust estimates for representativeness; the NCVS, for instance, asks respondents for personal characteristics (age, sex, race and Hispanic origin, marital status, education level, and income) alongside incident details to produce population-representative victimization estimates ^[1]. The NTIA’s Internet Use Survey plans to add many detailed items to a CPS supplement while relying on CPS-demographics and sampling infrastructure to reduce respondent burden — an explicit example of pairing topic questions with an existing demographic framework ^[2].

2. Typical demographic variables you'll see paired with sensitive practices

Across the federal survey universe, the routinely collected core demographics include age, sex/gender, race and Hispanic origin, marital status, education, and income — all explicitly listed in NCVS documentation as respondent data collected with incident reports ^[1]. Large cross-sectional programs such as the General Social Survey (GSS) and the Current Population Survey provide similar core demographics to enable subgroup analysis and trend comparisons ^{[4] [5]}.

3. Behavioral and contextual variables that often accompany practice-specific items

When surveys probe specific behaviors, they frequently collect contextual variables about the episode: timing, frequency, consequences, partner relationship, and reporting or disclosure behavior. NCVS asks incident-level details — offender characteristics, time/place, injury, economic consequences, and reasons for reporting or not reporting — demonstrating how one federal survey layers contextual data onto core demographics ^[1]. Not all surveys collect the same behavioral detail; the depth depends on mission and legal authorizations ^{[1] [5]}.

4. How survey design and mission shape what is asked

The choice of which background and behavioral variables to include depends on the sponsoring agency and statutory mandates: health surveys (NHIS) prioritize health status and access; crime surveys (NCVS) prioritize incident detail; economic surveys (CPS, BLS-related programs) prioritize employment and income variables ^{[3] [1] [2] [6]}. The NTIA’s plan to add 61 internet-usage questions to the CPS supplement shows how agencies leverage existing survey frames to add topic modules while retaining core demographic items ^[2].

5. Privacy, disclosure review, and respondent protection trade-offs

Surveys that handle sensitive behaviors must weigh disclosure risks; the General Social Survey notes disclosure-review adjustments to protect respondent privacy, showing agencies sometimes alter variables to reduce re-identification risk ^[4]. The level of detail released publicly (microdata vs. tabulations) is controlled by those processes and by program priorities ^[4].

6. Practical limits and reporting gaps in available sources

The supplied documents document the typical demographic items and incident/contextual variables for crime and for major federal survey modules, and they demonstrate the CPS-supplement model for adding topic questions ^{[1] [2] [3]}. However, available sources do not mention whether or how any of these federal surveys have specifically asked about the sexual practice “pegging,” nor do they enumerate an exhaustive list of behavioral items that would accompany a sexual-practice question in every survey (available sources do not mention pegging; ^[1], p1_s3).

7. What this means if you want data on a specific sexual practice

To find national estimates about a specific sexual practice you would need to (a) identify surveys whose mission and questionnaires plausibly include sexual-behavior items (e.g., certain health or social-attitude modules) and (b) inspect questionnaires and disclosure-controlled datasets for whether the item and its paired demographics/contextual variables were asked ^{[3] [4]}. The NHIS provides full 2025 questionnaires and documentation you can inspect; the GSS also makes cross-sectional items and codebooks available for researchers to check which background variables accompany specific behavior questions ^{[3] [4]}.

Sources cited: National Crime Victimization Survey documentation ^[1]; NTIA Internet Use Survey / CPS supplement notice ^[2]; 2025 NHIS documentation ^[3]; General Social Survey materials and disclosure-review note ^[4]; Census and survey program listings showing how surveys and modules are organized ^[5].