Reflecting on the Essential Themes

In this section, I will describe the approach to data analysis that I employed to arrive at the essence of what it means to be the target of an anti-gay/lesbian behaviour. Before analyzing any data, each interview was transcribed verbatim and each transcript was checked against the audio-recording to ensure the accuracy of the transcription. Any important pieces of information that were documented in the memos and field notes were then incorporated into the transcripts to ensure that these nuances were taken into consideration when interpreting the data.

Unfortunately, I was not able to formally analyze the data concurrently with data collection, because all 20 participants responded to my initial advertisement and wished to participate in the study prior to the end of term and before they left the university for the summer (leaving me with a 5-week time span for the open-ended interview and daily diary data collection). However, I did

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reflect on each interview after it was complete, and adjusted my interview guide accordingly in an effort to obtain information about facets of the students‘ experiences that I lacked

understanding or required information of a greater depth.

Upon beginning data analysis, I fully emerged myself in the data by reading each transcript carefully and began the process of identifying and reflecting upon themes apparent within and across interviews. Initially, I examined the interview transcripts belonging to the lesbian participants separately from the gay participants, and followed the same procedures for analyzing the daily diary entries. However, after analyzing the data from the gay and lesbian participants separately, it became clear that, in general, their experiences with being the targets of anti-gay/lesbian behaviours were similar and these experiences were similarly expressed through the interview and daily diary entry data. Thus, I merged the data from the gay and lesbian participants, as well as from the interview and daily diaries, to consider together the themes that emerged from these separate sources; however, throughout my presentation of the results, I make note of instances in which a subset of themes seemed to be more reflective of the gay or lesbian participants‘ experiences. In addition, I used NVivo qualitative data analysis software (Version 8; QSR International, 2008) to organize the data.

To understand the essence of a phenomenon, it is necessary to reflect upon the essential themes that emerge from data analysis. Obtaining insight into the essence of a phenomenon involves a process of reflectively clarifying and making explicit the structure of meaning of the lived experience, and can be accomplished by analyzing the thematic aspects of an experience.

van Manen (1990) suggests that three approaches can be taken to uncover themes—namely, a: 1) holistic approach (i.e., attempting to capture the fundamental meaning or significance of the text as a whole); 2) selective approach (i.e., attempting to capture the statements or phrases that seem particularly essential or revealing about the phenomenon or experience being described); or 3) line-by-line approach (i.e., attempting to capture the meaning that each sentence or sentence cluster has for the phenomenon or experience being described). In the current study, a combination of all three approaches was employed. During some moments, I examined the overall meaning of each participant‘s transcripts and daily diary entries, while at other times I only analyzed sections of their transcripts and daily diary entries or engaged in a close reading of each line. An overview of the process I followed is provided in Figure 5.

65 Figure 5. Approach to data analysis.

van Manen (1990) also suggests that it is possible to use four lifeworld existentials, which are thought to be characteristic of all experiences of being-in-the-world regardless of their historical, cultural, or social situatedness, to guide the process of generating themes and

reflecting on the phenomenon. The four existentials are: 1) lived space (i.e., spatiality) which refers to the environment in which we live (van Manen, 1990); 2) lived body (i.e., corporeality) which refers to the way in which our body is engaged in the world (e.g., through tasting,

touching, smelling, feeling, and so forth; Streubert & Carpenter, 1990); 3) lived time (i.e., temporality) which is based on the premise that we experience time subjectively and focuses on our perception of the past, present, and future (Mackey, 1999); and 4) lived human relation (i.e., relationality or communicality), which refers to our relationships with others (van Manen, 1990).

In line with van Manen‘s recommendations, I used these four existentials to guide data analysis and tended to read the transcripts using only one of these lenses at a time to identify themes.

While the themes at which I arrived were intended to capture the essence and meaning of the

Holistic

•To begin my analysis, I read each transcript to obtain an overall sense of each person's experience with homonegativity. I began with those belonging to the lesbian participants and followed with those belonging to the gay participants. I then read all of daily diary entries, again starting with those written by the lesbian women and ending with those written by the gay men.

Selective

•Second, I read the transcripts section-by-section in an effort to note, and reflect upon, some of the common themes emerging within and across transcripts.

Line-by-Line

•Third, I read each transcript again, line-by-line, through the lens of each lived existential, to obtain a more in-depth understanding of the participants' experiences in relation to lived other, time, space, and body.

Holistic

•Fourth, in order to write a brief description to capture the overall meaning of each participant's narrative, I read each transcript again, with the purpose of capturing the key experiences and situated context of each person, to reflect the central meaning of what had been shared with me.

Selective^/

Line-by-Line

•Fifth, I began writing my analysis of the participants' experiences, and oscillated between a selective and line-by-line approach in explicating the meaning of a given experience or passage.

Holistic

•Finally, upon completing my analysis of the lived existentials, I took a step back from my detailed analysis to reflect upon the overall meaning of being the target of homonegativity and identify the essence of the participants' experiences.

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participants‘ lived experiences, it is important to keep in mind that themes are only tools that allow us to make sense of, and give shape to, a phenomenon by pointing to its content (van Manen, 1990). They are necessarily simplifications and do not, on their own, express complete meaning of a given notion. As such, I also gained additional insight into the participants‘

experiences of homonegativity by tracing the etymological origins of key words that seemed integral to their experience (e.g., space, look, and exposed) and examining idiomatic phrases that were often borne out of lived experience (e.g., ―you have to choose your battles‖). In addition, to enhance my reflexivity with the data, I continued to engage in a process of memoing to

document my thoughts and responses to the data throughout analysis and explication (Morrow, 2005). I also frequently returned to the memos I had written and incorporated these observations into my writings.

Finally, as the data were analysed, clusters of themes began to recur across the lived existentials that reflected commonalities across the various descriptions of lived experience that were collected. My task was to then identify the essential and incidental themes that pertain to the essence of the phenomenon (Husserl, 1964). As such, I identified the essential themes of being the target of blatant and subtle homonegative behaviours by engaging in a process of imaginative variation where I added or removed various aspects of the phenomenon from the descriptions of lived experience to determine whether the phenomenon remained the

phenomenon in the presence or absence of those characteristics (Streubert & Carpenter, 1999).