Reflection on methods

As a novice researcher the research process was a learning experience. This brief discussion offers some insights into lessons learnt.

In places more care could have been taken to have included a wider range of topics for discussion with respondents. A clearer focus on biphobia, as well as homophobia, could have been useful. A fuller focus on boundaries for youth workers when using social media, where it was probably even more important that personal information was not shared (as noted by Sapin, 2013), could have been useful. These omissions reflected my lack of focus on these issues rather than any lack of interest amongst respondents. Research around the role of social media within youth work generally is a gap in current research (apart from research carried out by Melvin, 2019) so examining how and where boundaries are set by youth workers when engaging with young people through social media could be an area of possible future research.

It had been the aim of the research to only interview professionally qualified youth workers (as noted in Ch.1). However, due to a lack of focus, three of the first five interviewees were graduates with several years of experience as full time (or nearly full time) youth workers but they were not professionally qualified. The data collected from these experienced practitioners (all working to some extent in settings targeted at LGBT young people) who were not professionally qualified was rich data and it was felt that this data was useful in the research. The focus of the research was not impacted on by this error however a more flexible approach to interviewing practitioners with different levels of qualifications may be useful in any future research.

Conclusion

This study started from the ontological position that the nature of identity is socially constructed. Stories were examined from the perspective of the respondents as recounted within the interviews. If stories had been heard from different participants or on different days an alternative, but just as valid story, could have been told. Taking an interpretivist and feminist approach again emphasised the importance of the timing and context of the stories told by these fifteen respondents. It also emphasised the impact of myself, as the researcher, on how stories were told and on what stories were told by respondents.

The synthesis between my values and skills developed through decades as a practitioner of, and lecturer in, youth work and those required for this feminist standpoint research process was

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discussed. The semi-structured interviews were conducted in the style of dialogue rather than formal interviews in order to build respectful and democratic relationships. Reflexive and reflective practice was brought to all stages of the research process including the preparations, the data collection, the analysis and drawing of conclusions. This allowed a critical approach to the research so minimising my impact on the research whilst developing a continued awareness that my standpoint and starting point was an important part of the research process. Other feminist research values were important within different elements of the research process. The data was collected in and about ‘real world’ (Smith, D.E., 1987, p89) situations. I was hopeful that respondents would be empowered by the research process and I was aware of the importance of openness and transparency through the different elements of research process: the sampling, data collection, analysis and dissemination of the themes and insights gained from the research. The findings from this qualitative research are only valid for the respondents of the study and wider generalisations will be tentative. The validity of the research can be judged by the transparency and openness of the research processes as noted above. The reliability of the research again depends on this transparency as the research could not be replicated by other researchers due to the weight of the interviewer effect on the processes as noted above. Care was taken to follow the guidance of BERA (2018) and GDPR with regard to ethics within the research process.

Purposive and sequential sampling enabled fifteen LGBQ women youth workers, of different ages, social class, ethnicities and youth work settings to be interviewed. Semi-structured audio- recorded interviews (of 60 or 90 minutes) were undertaken with each respondent; most being interviewed twice. Transcriptions of the interviews allowed an ongoing revisiting of the interviews thus enabling an exhaustive focus to identify the important themes and subthemes for the template approach to thematic analysis. This approach was decided on after several false starts using narrative approaches to analysis. However, the flexible nature of the template approach allowed some of the key values of narrative research to be sustained through the analysis of the data.

The template for analysis was not a neat and ordered structure but rather a messy process that went through several inventions and re-inventions before ending up as an organised and ordered list of themes that assisted in the analysis and dissemination of findings. This template was crucial in putting together the findings chapters that form the rest of this thesis. Themes identified on

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the template include the stories and scripts of becoming and how the respondents moved towards their current self-awareness of their own sexuality (Ch.5) and the impact of respondents’ awareness of their LGBQ sexuality on how they name their self at this point in time (Ch.6). Why respondents chose to share or not share information about their self with young people and how they knew when and where to set boundaries in regard to sharing information about their self forms the third theme (Ch.7). How these youth workers used their self within their professional relationships with young people is the next theme (Ch.8) with the theme of change being the final findings chapter (9). Quotations from respondents are presented in italics throughout these chapters to ensure that they are easily distinguished from any quotations from the literature.

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