More publications!

We are excited to share that there are now two more publications from the study! Please contact Dr. Megan Gandy to get a free copy of these articles by emailing her at megan (dot) gandy (at) mail (dot) wvu (dot) edu. 

Gandy, M. E., Natale, A., & Levy, D. (2023) Looking for a home: How LGBTQ+ people discern their faith community choice. Journal of Gay & Lesbian Social Services, published online https://doi.org/10.1080/10538720.2023.2252775 

Timbers, V., Gandy, M. E., Papciak, R., & Hopwood, R. (2023). Faithful Foundations: Positive Experiences of Transgender and Gender Expansive Individuals in Faith Communities. Mental Health, Religion, & Culture, 26(5), 470-486. https://doi.org/10.1080/13674676.2023.2245351

It is published!

We are excited to share the peer-reviewed publication that reports on some of the findings from this study. You can find the publication here: https://doi.org/10.1037/scp0000225. You may also find a pre-publication version of the paper on Megan's Academia.edu profile, at: https://www.academia.edu/49350955/_We_shared_a_heartbeat_Protective_functions_of_faith_communities_in_the_lives_of_LGBTQ_people

Research Update #12: It's a marathon, not a sprint

Well I am saddened to realize that I had not updated this blog in almost a year!! The truth of the matter is, this study has been a slow trickle of work rather than a monstrous waterfall. Even though the stories and lived experiences shared with me from your interviews felt like a waterfall of information, it has taken quite some time to sift through it all in a way that I feel most adequately honors your stories.

For the sake of continuity, I'll give you a snapshot of what the past year has looked like for this project:

• Began work on initial coding of transcripts. Noted multiple transcription errors so egregious that they warranted a second listen to triple check the transcripts for accuracy. This took the remainder of the summer to complete. 
• Resumed work on initial coding of transcripts, but a member of the research team left the institution and this left me with a need to replace that person's role in the research process. I successfully recruited someone else, and had to catch that person up to speed on the project. 
• We resumed a more rigorous coding schedule in early 2018, aiming to finish by March and submit a manuscript for review by May. 
• Encountered multiple setbacks due to the software we were using to organize the data. I left this project on the back burner so I could attend to more urgent matters.
• Now that it's summer again, I am resuming an optimistic coding schedule so I can make up for lost time, and hope to finish coding by the middle of June. Then perhaps we can submit a manuscript by late July or early August. 

With all of that said, I'm going to jump back into the coding so that I don't get sidetracked! I will still post updates on my Twitter feed, so be sure to check there for additional details of the analysis.

Research update #11: Beginning analysis

Hello to all! Here's another quick update to let you know that this project is still alive and going. My intention from this spring was to dedicate time to the analysis of these data in the summer. So, here we are in the summer, and here I am dedicating my time to the analysis! For those research buffs out there I am using a newer method of qualitative analysis and complimenting it with an older method. The newer method is the "Sort & Sift, Think & Shift" method that I went through training for in November of last year (http://researchtalk.com/). The older method is grounded theory in the Charmaz tradition (https://us.sagepub.com/en-us/nam/constructing-grounded-Theory/book235960).

The first step is to immerse myself in the data. So, I am re-reading all of the transcripts from the 30 interviews that we conducted back in the spring of 2016. Next, I'll look for themes that arise from the data, and use constant comparison to compare pieces of data to each other, in terms of looking for ways to expand or support the themes. One part of immersing oneself in the data involves identifying "power quotations" - or quotations that really strike the reader as important or worthy of highlighting. The purpose of identifying these quotations is to then consider, what was it about that quotation that made me pause? What is the idea that quotation is conveying? How could I best summarize that idea?

The Sort & Sift, Think & Shift (SSTS for short) method calls for the researcher to stay in a "vertical" mindset, not a "horizontal" one. What that means is that in the SSTS method, we treat each piece of data as a stand-alone entity in the beginning. We examine it from top to bottom, as if it existed with no other pieces of data. This is appealing to me because it gives "voice" to each participant of the study in a way that honors their stories and gives each story a chance to stand alone. I really enjoyed listening to each person's stories, and I want to find a way to honor their voice without it getting buried in the analysis. In qualitative analysis, we move from abstraction to abstraction, meaning that we move further away from the data so that we can summarize and categorize into themes that help us understand the "whole picture." Think of it as putting a jigsaw puzzle together. The transcripts of the interviews are like pieces of the puzzle. But the way I think of it is like those puzzles where you can make little mini pictures within a greater puzzle. Like, when an owl or a tiger is hidden in a larger puzzle of a train station. I don't like losing sight of the smaller stories for the sake of the larger analysis. So I like to stay "close to the data," or in other words I like to keep those stories fresh in my mind. But, it is very difficult to make a whole puzzle if you only look at individual pieces. So, I like the SSTS method because it gives me tools to both "stay close to the data" but also to "zoom out" and look at the larger picture that is coming together as I look at each interview and think about how they might be connected.

So anyway, I am getting off topic a little bit. I just wanted to give you a sense of what I'm doing with the study at this point! I'll be sharing a few sneak peeks of my analysis on my Twitter feed as I go through the data, so stay tuned for more updates!

Research update #10: Qualitative research training

After another long hiatus, we finally have another update for you! The life of a tenure-track professor is complicated, and sometimes projects fall to the "wayside" when there is not a set deadline or pressure from an external source. So, in order to inject new "life" into the analysis of this project, I decided to attend a workshop on a particular research method. The method is in the family of methods called qualitative methods. These methods are different than quantitative methods in that they focus more on the words and the qualities of what someone said, rather than counting up the number of times someone said something, or giving a score to someone's input based on a survey or a questionnaire. We chose qualitative methods for this project because we felt it was the best way to honor the unique stories that we knew we would hear from you all.

The workshop is offered by a company called ResearchTalk. The session I (Megan) attended was here: http://researchtalk.com/qualitative-data-analysis-camp-november-2016/. I am grateful for this workshop because it gave me time to step back from other demands and just sit with the interview transcripts from your interviews and start to sift through them to find the meaningful themes and results. I look forward to sharing some preliminary results soon!

Research update #9: Data cleaning and preparation

Well, after a busy summer, we are back at it with this study. As of now, we are cleaning and prepping the transcripts of all 30 interviews, then our next step will be to conduct initial coding using the grounded theory techniques of Charmaz. Stay tuned for our next update, when we'll share what emerging themes develop from our analysis of the data!

Research update #8: Data collection complete!

We are excited to announce that we have completed all of our interviews! We did a total of 30, from a wide range of backgrounds. Thank you for sharing your stories with us, it was our pleasure to talk to you! Next step is analysis, which we'll be working on this summer. Stay tuned for what we learn from the data!