STUDY: One-Third of Israelis Are Bisexual

New research suggests there are 10 times as many bisexuals in Israel as gays and lesbians.

A new study of sexuality in Israel, portrayed as the first of its kind, reveals that a significant number of people in the Jewish state identify on the bisexual spectrum.

According to this new survey by the Israeli website Mako and the Panels Institute of several hundred secular Jews living in Israel, 67 percent of participants identified as “exclusively heterosexual,” while only 3 percent said they were “exclusively homosexual.” The answers from the remaining 30 percent said they identified as being in between being exclusively heterosexual or homosexual.

The survey used a Kinsey scale, having respondents rank themselves from 0 to 6, 0 being exclusively heterosexual, while 6 was exclusively homosexual. One-third of the participants placed themselves along the 1-5 bisexual spectrum, noting they are open to sexual activity with different genders.

These results follow a two other surveys conduced by YouGov, which found that half of British young adults fall on the bisexual spectrum, as do one-third of American young adults. Together, the three studies lead researchers to the conclusion that at least a third of the population in the U.S., U.K., and Israel believe themselves to be neither "exclusively homosexual" nor "exclusively heterosexual," but instead landing somewhere on the bisexual spectrum.

The survey by the Panels Institute was conducted August 23-24, involving 600 adult participants, aged 18 and over. The survey has a +/- 4 percent sampling error. The results here were translated from the original Hebrew.