Attitudes towards lesbians and gay men and support for lesbian and gay human rights among psychology students

A questionnaire comprising two scales, the short form of the Attitudes Towards Lesbians and Gay Men Scale (ATLG-S; Herek, 1984) and the newly devised Support for Lesbian and Gay Human Rights Scale (SLGHR) were administered to 226 students taking undergraduate psychology courses at universities in the United Kingdom, to assess their attitudes towards lesbians and gay men, and their level of support for lesbian and gay human rights. The results indicated that whilst only a small percentage of respondents expressed negative attitudes towards lesbians and gay men on the ATLG-S, the sample as a whole did not overwhelmingly support lesbian and gay human rights. The lack of support for lesbian and gay human rights is discussed in relation to its implications for psychology students as future practitioners and policy makers. </p

Insider and Outsider Perspectives: Reflections on Researcher Identities in Research with Lesbian and Bisexual Women

© Taylor & Francis Group, LLC. In this article, we reflect on the concept of the insider and the outsider in qualitative research. We draw on our different experiences of conducting research with lesbian and bisexual women, using our PhD research projects as case studies to consider our similarities to and differences from our research participants. We highlight the impact that insider/outsider status can have at each stage of the research process, from deciding on a research topic, the design of materials, communicating with and recruiting participants through to data collection and analysis. We discuss the advantages and disadvantages of both insider and outsider positions and reflect on our own experiences. We conclude that, in reality, insider/outsider boundaries may be more blurred than the terms imply and highlight some of the ethical considerations that need to be taken into consideration during qualitative research

Anonymising interview data: challenges and compromise in practice

Anonymising qualitative research data can be challenging, especially in highly sensitive contexts such as catastrophic brain injury and end-of-life decision-making. Using examples from in-depth interviews with family members of people in vegetative and minimally conscious states, this article discusses the issues we faced in trying to maximise participant anonymity alongside maintaining the integrity of our data. We discuss how we developed elaborate, context-sensitive strategies to try to preserve the richness of the interview material wherever possible while also protecting participants. This discussion of the practical and ethical details of anonymising is designed to add to the largely theoretical literature on this topic and to be of illustrative use to other researchers confronting similar dilemmas

Paedophiles in the community: inter-agency conflict, news leaks and the local press

This article explores the leaking of confidential information about secret Home Office plans to house convicted paedophiles within a local community (albeit inside a prison). It argues that a politics of paedophilia has emerged in which inter-agency consensus on the issue of ‘what to do’ with high-profile sex offenders has broken down. Accordingly, the article situates newspaper ‘outing’ of paedophiles in the community in relation to vigilante journalism and leaked information from official agencies. The article then presents research findings from a case study of news events set in train following a whistle-blowing reaction by Prison Officers’ Association officials to Home Office plans. Drawing from a corpus of 10 interviews with journalists and key protagonists in the story, the article discusses both the dynamics of whistle blowing about paedophiles and also what happens after the whistle has blown

Bisexual women's understandings of social marginalisation: 'The heterosexuals don't understand US but nor do the lesbians'

Drawing on interviews with 20 self-identified bisexual women, this paper contributes to the limited psychological literature on bisexual women by exploring their experiences of social marginalisation. These (mainly white and middle class) British bisexual women reported that they did not feel at home in either lesbian or lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender communities, nor in the wider (heteronormative) society. They identified a number of understandings - bisexuality as a temporary phase on the path to a fully realised lesbian or heterosexual identity and bisexuals as immature, confused, greedy, untrustworthy, highly sexual and incapable of monogamy - which they reported as arising from lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender communities and the wider society. The women refuted these accounts which they stated did not reflect their experiences of bisexual identity and which positioned bisexuality as invisible and invalid. © The Author(s) 2014 Reprints and permissions: sagepub.co.uk/journalsPermissions.nav

'Lad culture' in higher education: agency in the sexualisation debates

This paper reports on research funded by the National Union of Students, which explored women students’ experiences of ‘lad culture’ through focus groups and interviews. We found that although laddism is only one of various potential masculinities, for our participants it dominated social and sexual spheres of university life in problematic ways. However, their objections to laddish behaviours did not support contemporary models of ‘sexual panic’, even while oppugning the more simplistic celebrations of young women’s empowerment which have been observed in debates about sexualisation. We argue that in their ability to reject ‘lad culture’, our respondents expressed a form of agency which is often invisibilised in sexualisation discussions and which could be harnessed to tackle some of the issues we uncovered

How do patients, politicians, physiotherapists and other health professionals view physiotherapy research in Switzerland? : a qualitative study

Since 2002, the professional education for Swiss physiotherapists has been upgraded to a tertiary educational level. With this change, the need for research related to professional practice has become more salient. The elaboration of research priorities is seen as a possible way to determine the profession's needs, to help coordinate research collaborations and to address expectations regarding physiotherapy. There is still limited evidence about stakeholders' views with regard to physiotherapy research. The objective of this study was to investigate key stakeholders' opinions about research in physiotherapy in Switzerland

Developing a multimedia learning resource for allied health professionals: exploring the challenges of prolonged disorders of consciousness

Relevance: Recognising the increasing number of people being sustained with prolonged disorders of consciousness (PDoC), this study introduces new research with allied health professionals (AHPs) that is being used to create a range of digital resources to support AHP undergraduate education and practitioner CPD. Purpose: Previous research (Latchem et al., 2015) identified a mismatch between understandings that families of people with a PDoC hold of AHP interventions and the aims and understandings of AHPs delivering those interventions. This study explores a) how AHPs understand and navigate practical, ethical and legal issues surrounding the care of these patients, b) the learning needs of both qualified and pre-registration AHPs and c) uses the data to create e-learning resources for AHPs and their students. Methods/analysis: This qualitative study uses video-taped interviews with 15 physiotherapists, occupational therapists and speech and language therapists purposively sampled from NHS and independent care providers, and workshops conducted with mixed AHP pre-registration students. The interviews/workshops were transcribed and analysed thematically, adopting a grounded-theory approach to examine experience and learning needs surrounding PDoC care. Emergent themes informed the focus and structure of the e-learning resource. Results: AHPs described how the needs of PDoC patients shifted the focus of, and extended their clinical skills. They reported struggling adjusting to, and finding satisfaction in, their work with this client group who don’t ‘improve’, have a clear rehabilitative nor declining trajectory. Satisfaction however was derived through close multidisciplinary team working. The intertwining of their therapeutic work occurred to such an extent that AHPs resisted defining a distinct disciplinary role and instead discussed their work as entirely interdisciplinary. AHPs repeatedly identified the dilemmas faced by families and discussed the tensions in their own thinking as their clinical objectivity clashed with their own sense of and feelings about the patients’ level of consciousness. They highlighted concerns about the ethics of medical ‘advancements’ and life-sustaining treatments and expressed uneasiness and uncertainty regarding their role in treatment withdrawal situations. Pilot workshops are being developed around these key issues and e-learning resources to support needs for training will be ready for dissemination at conference. Discussion and conclusions: Both families and AHPs can question patients’ level of awareness and the rationale of treatments. However, when families expect ongoing therapeutic input for their relative, or conversely see them as ‘irretrievably gone’, this sits in tension with AHP's clinical reasoning or at times, their relentless striving to capture signs of awareness and for ‘rehabilitation’. Ethical, legal, social and clinical dilemmas collide in the care of PDOC patients, challenging much contemporary clinical practice and pre-registration education. This study and the developing multimedia learning resource demonstrate the interplay between these elements and the scope for CPD support. Impact and implications: The research is developing a new multi-media resource to improve understandings of caring for PDoC patients/their families and related ethical/social/clinical issues. The resource builds on Kitzinger and Kitzinger's successful healthtalk.org module for families and has buy-in from the core AHP Professional Bodies. Our aim is that this AHP-facing resource will have high accessibility, MDT value and impact on personal, practice and curricula development

What young people want from health-related online resources: a focus group study

The growth of the Internet as an information source about health, particularly amongst young people, is well established. The aim of this study was to explore young people's perceptions and experiences of engaging with health-related online content, particularly through social media websites. Between February and July 2011 nine focus groups were facilitated across Scotland with young people aged between 14 and 18 years. Health-related user-generated content seems to be appreciated by young people as a useful, if not always trustworthy, source of accounts of other people's experiences. The reliability and quality of both user-generated content and official factual content about health appear to be concerns for young people, and they employ specialised strategies for negotiating both areas of the online environment. Young people's engagement with health online is a dynamic area for research. Their perceptions and experiences of health-related content seem based on their wider familiarity with the online environment and, as the online environment develops, so too do young people's strategies and conventions for accessing it