55+ Bisexual Individuals Needed!

[smietanski]

Please help us measure homophobia in health care, and offer suggestions for improving care to the LGBT community.

A study is being conducted by a graduate student in the DePaul University Nursing Department to investigate the occurrence of homophobia in health care settings, and its impact to health and health-seeking behaviors in lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender individuals 55 years of age and older. We would also like to receive your input on how to improve health care service provision to the older LGBT community.

Please fill out a short 3-5 minute anonymous survey that you can access using the link below.

Link: https://www.surveymonkey.com/s/homophobia

Approved by the DePaul Institutional Review Board On 5/13/11. See below for further information about this research study.


INFORMATION SHEET FOR PARTICIPATION IN RESEARCH STUDY

Homophobic Interactions in Health Care: Impacts to Health
and Health-Seeking Behaviors in Older Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender Individuals

You are being asked to participate in a research study being conducted by graduate nursing student Blake Smietanski. The study is supervised by Dr. Paula Kagan, and Dr. Karyn Holm at DePaul University. We are trying to learn more about your experiences with homophobia in a health care setting, and if homophobia has impacted your health and health-seeking behaviors. We would also like to receive your input on how to improve health care provision to the over 55 year old lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender community. This study will take about 3-5 minutes of your time. If you agree to be in this study, you will be asked to fill out an anonymous 11 question survey. The survey will include questions about your age, sexual identity, number of times you’ve experienced homophobia in a health care setting, sources of homophobia, and how homophobia has impacted your health and health-seeking behaviors. You can choose not to participate. There will be no negative consequences if you decide not to participate.

If you have questions about this study, please contact Blake Smietanski (Phone: 773.494.0948; email: smietanski@aol.com) or Dr. Paula Kagan (Phone: 773.325.7630; email: pkagan@depaul.edu). If you have questions about your rights as a research subject, you may contact Susan Loess-Perez, DePaul University’s Director of Research Protections at 312-362-7593 or by email at sloesspe@depaul.edu.


You may keep this information for your records.

[maxtor]

are you sure you are a grad student....that first question really dont make sense....why not ask: How old are you?? i guess you had a reason for asking it that way but when i read it, it just dont click in my brain.



1. What is your age? Greater than or equal to 55 years of _____ age.

or, would make better sense:


1. What is your age ____. (must be older than 55)

[lady_starlight]

you may get better results if you ask slightly more specific questions - im not over 55, but i took a look at the survey anyways for the heck of it. (don't worry, i didn't answer any questions and skew your results)

There are a couple of things you may want to clarify for your test subjects.

1. What do you consider Homophobia, or acts of homophobia? different people have a different idea of what this means. literally, it's a fear - so by asking "have you experienced any acts of homophobia", people may think "well, no one said they were afraid of me" and so click no. a better question may be have you experienced discrimination based on sexual identity/orientation by health care professionals?

2. There should be a question to clarify what type of discrimination has occurred - there's a huge difference between getting rude looks, having a doctor make comments, or outright being refused care. Having to fill out a sexual history form in order to recieve STD testing is a form of discrimination (or homophobia) against non-straight people, as it forces them to "out" themselves. Maybe offer a few examples of major things that happen often, and a "check all that apply" option, as well as an "other" category to catch those instances you didnt think of.

3. you will save yourself a whole lot of time if you offer a ranged option for ages. ie: 55-64, 65-74, etc. as your question sits now, i'd be inclined to answer "yes" as opposed to an actual age. also, if you have people offer an actual age, you then will have to go back and group them anyways when you do your analysis, otherwise you've got nothing to compare them by. being able to compare age groups, location, and income levels adds validity to your survey.

I don't mean to pick apart your survey, i was just hoping to offer you some suggestions to help you get great results!

[smietanski]

Thanks for the helpful feedback. Please understand that there are many questions I would like to ask, but based on time constraints, and the expectation that if a survey is too long, many people will resist completing it. I certainly have my limits with survey questions, and I think this one is a very modest time commitment. I recently participated in a survey that was listed as 5 minutes and it took 15, which is dishonest to the potential respondent.

I resisted putting the ages in categories, because I didn't want to impose limits. I may indeed break out age into groups later, but I lose information by creating those up front. As it stands, I can get an average age of respondent, but if I use categories then I don't know exactly where someone falls within a category. Not a crucial piece of information but I wanted to make sure the data was as robust as possible.

Concerning a definition of homophobia: our intent was to not define homophobia because each person will bring their own definition and answer the survey based on their perspective. It's a difficult concept to define in the first place and we were trying to respect individual differences. We simply want individuals to answer the survey in the way that makes sense to him/her.

Thanks again for your feedback. It is very much appreciated, and I will be using these to formally critique the research in my final paper.

Regards,
Blake

[Hephaestion]

Yes / No is a bit hard in places. 'Don't know' and 'Unaware' might be better or more truthful answers. Was gender required somewhere?

Good luck.