The results of the first and largest international study of homophobia in sport have been released.

Approximately 9,5000 people participated in the online survey. Approximately 25 percent of the respondents were heterosexual. In Canada, 1,123 people responded (225 of them were straight).

The study was initiated by organizers of the Bingham Cup Sydney 2014, the world cup of gay rugby, and a coalition of LGBT sports groups, including You Can Play, International Gay Rugby, the Federation of Gay Games, and the Australian Sports Commission.

Seven international experts from six universities in Australia, the USA, the U.K., and Canada (University of Winnipeg and Laval University), oversaw the study.

The study was conducted in six English-speaking countries: Canada, New Zealand, Australia, Ireland, the U.K., and the USA.

The countries were measured on how many people were out to their team, the percentage of people who did not witness or experience homophobia, the percentage of those with positive views about spectator safety, the percentage of those who believe youth sport was safe and supportive, and the percentage of those who believed queer people were accepted in sports culture.

The good news is that Canadian sports culture topped the list as the most inclusive out of six countries, with a score of 148 out of 500 points. The lowest scoring country? The U.S. with 84 points out of 500.

Canadians did have the most positive view of acceptance of queer athletes, with only 29 percent of all respondents believing they would not be accepted at all.

Adult Canadian gay men and New Zealand lesbians were the most likely to be out of the closet.

However, there are areas that Canada needs to improve, and some issues of concern.

While the majority of lesbian, gay, and bisexual Canadians said they played a variety of sports, one in four gay men said they did not play youth team sports due to fears about being rejected for their sexual orientation or negative experiences in school PE classes.

In fact, P.E. classes were an area of concern unique to Canada.

While most other countries said homophobia was most likely to occur in spectator stands, Canadians ranked P.E. classes as equivalent with spectator stands (28 percent). Canadians were also more likely to identify P.E. class as homophobic than other countries.

Even more troubling, a whopping 81 percent of participants have witnessed or experiences homophobia in sports.

For those who personally experienced homophobia (57 percent of gay men, 45 percent lesbians, 41 percent straight men), their experiences included:

• verbal threats of harm and physical assault: 13 percent of lesbians, 26 percent of gay men (23 percent physical assault);

• being bullied: 16 percent of lesbians, 41 percent of gay men;

• verbal slurs used against them (such as "dyke" or "faggot"): 88 percent lesbians, 84 percent gay men.

What's more, Canada's rates of physical assault and bullying of gay men were the highest out of the six countries.

Canada also had the highest number of straight men who reported receiving homophobic slurs and were the most likely out of the six countries to personally experience homophobia.

Dr. Sandra Kirby, a former Olympic athlete who studies homophobia in sports at the University of Winnipeg, was one of the members of the study's expert panel who analyzed the Canadian results.

“The findings from this study and other research we have conducted in Canada shows that homophobia continues to be quite common in sports, while the rest of Canadian society has progressed much further around acceptance and inclusion of lesbian, gay and bisexual (LGB) people," she stated in a news release. "I think part of the reason sports culture hasn’t progressed as much is because lesbian, gay and bisexual athletes remain largely invisible, particularly in youth sports. Compared to other parts of society, people involved in sports still feel a strong need to hide their sexuality. This unfortunately makes the problem of homophobia in sports easy to ignore because you can’t see how it is affecting the athletes who remain in the closet.”

For more information about the study, visit the Out on the Fields website.