What you know depends on how you know: a queer approach for measuring sexual fluidity

they study it. A sample of 52 LGBTQ+-identified individuals who completed a brief structured demographic questionnaire prior to an in-depth interview allows for a within-study comparison of how the same respondents described their sexuality across different modalities of data collection. Our findings highlight inconsistencies between what participants wrote in a survey and how they verbalised their experiences in an interview. These differences can influence how researchers understand fluidity by variably accenting attractions, behaviours, or identities; fixed or flexible categories; familiar or emergent labels; residual 'other' classifications; or situationally adaptive responses. Inspired by queer methods, we argue that these apparent inconsistencies do not always pose measurement challenges; they can also serve as generative sites for theorising sexual fluidity.