Research design
Qualitative approach & method
For this study a qualitative research approach was used, with semi-structured individual interviews as a data collection method. The reason for choosing a qualitative approach with interviews was because of the fact that the focus lies on the experience of bicultural adolescents with LGBT+ feelings and the influence from their social environment in terms of school and family. Moreover, through these qualitative interviews there was a possibility to conduct valid data about these experiences.
This is also argued by Cuadraz and Uttal (1999), in which they state that in-depth interviews ‘encourage individuals to explain how they view their circumstances, to define issues in their own terms, to identify processes leading to different outcomes, and to interpret the meaning of their lives to the researcher’ (p. 160).
Individual in-depth & semi-structured interviews
Using qualitative interviews as a data collection has several major purposes. According to Malinowiski it is of great importance to talk to people in order “to grasp their point of view, and personal account are seen as having central importance in social research because of the power of language to illuminate meaning” (Burgess, 1982a, as cited in Legard et al., 2003). Moreover, interviews allow one to understand the experiences and perspectives of respondents, which will become clear through their stories, account and explanations; it is also a way to gather information that cannot be observed by others (Lindlof & Taylor, 2011).
During the interviews with the bicultural adolescent with LGBT+ feelings the position of the interviewer was both active and passive. This could also be seen as the miner and traveler metaphor coined by Kvale (1996). Therefore, on could say that the knowledge and information obtained during the interviews was both created and negotiated, but also given at some points. This was an important feature in the study due to the fact that sexual diversity and the creation of belonging labels can be seen from a constructivist perspective, in which it is all a construct of society. In this way the interviews offer an opportunity to “co-create meaning with the interviewees by reconstructing perceptions and experiences” (DiCicco-Bloom & Crabtree, 2006, p. 316). Moreover, in-depth individual interviews have the benefit of uncovering concerns and issues that were not yet considered by the researcher, since these types of interviews allow the interviewer to go more into detail about specific subjects.
The key feature of semi-structured in-depth interviews is that “it is intended to combine structure with flexibility” (Legard et al., 2003). For this reason a flexible topic guide was made to provide a loose structure of open-ended questions in order to find out about the experiences of bicultural adolescents with LGBT+ feelings with their social environment, and the perspective of social care on the topic of culture and sexual diversity.
Feminist research approach
In the use of qualitative, individual in-depth interviews with the bicultural adolescents a feminist perspective was taken. This is due to the fact that a feminist research approach concentrates on the form and features of in-depth interviewing (Finch, 1984, Nielsen, 1990, Oakly, 1981, Olesen, 2000, Reinharz, 1992 as cited in Legard, Keegan & Ward, 2003). It is argued that ‘the feminist approach attempts to be more reflexive and interactive, aiming to take a non-hierarchical approach which avoids objectifying the participant’ (Legard, et al., 2003, p.153). This approach leads to collaboration between the participants and the interviewee, and thus, this relationship is being argued as the best achieved way of finding out about people (Oakley, 1981, as cited in Doucet & Mauthner, 2006). Due to the fact that the goal of this research is to find out how bicultural adolescents with LGBT+ feelings experience their social environment and whether or not social work is able to fulfill their needs when it comes to the request for help.
Moreover, the use of a feminist approach during the interviews made it possible to step outside the formal role of interviewer, in which the ability occurred to expressive my own feelings and giving information about both parties. Because the participants and I shared the membership of the same minority groups, the opportunity came along to act as a leveler against a power hierarchy in the interviewee-interviewer relationship (Doucet & Mauthner, 2006).
Strengths and weaknesses of qualitative in-depth interviews
When making use of qualitative interviews several strengths and weaknesses are involved and be thought of. Most importantly, the social desirability, reliability and validity of the collected interview data depend on the skills of the interviewer as well as the information given by interviewees.
To ensure the trustworthiness of the study the technique of ‘member checks’ was used. Member validation refers to “the procedure whereby the transcripts of the interviews will be checked by the participants” (Lewis-Beck, Bryman & Liao, 2004, para. 1). Moreover, the exercise of member validation offered the opportunity to confirm that what the respondents intended was understood correctly by the researcher. If not the possibility arose for the respondents to correct the errors in wrong interpretations (Lewis-Beck et al., 2004). Due the fact that this study was about the experiences of bicultural LGBT+ adolescents with their social environment and social care, and the perspective of social workers on this topic, it was of great importance to ‘member check’ the data.
Although, member checks are used in order to ensure trustworthiness, the existence of social desirability can be accounted as a influence on the results of the study. Social desirability refers to “the tendency of some respondents to report an answer in a way they deem to be more socially acceptable that would be their ‘true’ answer, and thus avoid negative evaluations” (Callegaro, 2008, para. 2). In this study, social desirability was reduced when interviewing the bicultural adolescent due to the feminist research approached. However, with the social workers it could have occurred do to the fact that this study also focused on how they support and guide bicultural LBGT+ adolescents within their organization. Working for a certain organization can have an influence on the answers the participants give. There was a possibility that the participating social workers did not want to admit the flaws of the support policy of themselves or the organization they work for, to avoid negative evaluations and project a favorable image of themselves and the organization.
Furthermore, qualitative interviews offered the possibility to obtain rich data about the experiences of bicultural adolescents with LGBT+ feelings with their social environment and social care, and the perspectives of social workers on this topic. Although, there was an interview guide created to structure interview questions, the participants of both parties were able to give detailed responses in a free manner, whereby a deviation from the interview guide was made possible. Moreover, due to the use of semi-structured interviews the opportunity arose to discuss and clarify difficult and complex questions or issues, which was helpful for the analysis of the transcripts. Nonetheless, it had to be taken into account that semi-structured interviews have a great weakness. Providing an opportunity to let participants respond, discuss and clarify their thoughts and opinions in great detail is very time consuming and possibly expensive (Boyce & Neale, 2006).
Sampling method
Sample & sample size
Due to the fact that interviews were used to discover shared understandings and perspectives of a certain group, which were the shared understandings of bicultural LGBT+ adolescents and those of social workers, the sample had to share similarities in relation to the research question (DiCicco-Bloom & Crabtree, 2006). Since the experiences of bicultural adolescents with LGBT+ feelings with their social environment were central to this study, the sample contained adolescents all with different cultural backgrounds than Dutch and identified with the LGBT+ community or had LGBT+ feelings. All the participating adolescents were recruited at the Hangout 010, which is a organization in Rotterdam that provides a safe haven for all of those who have LGBT+ feelings, question their gender identity or is an allay of the community. Moreover, social workers were also recruited as participants for the research. These social workers were chosen from different organizations in Rotterdam that have a main focus on adolescents and signaling, guide and support this group on several aspects of life.
For this study, the eventual sample consisted out of 14 participants of which 9 bicultural adolescents with LGBT+ feelings and five social workers. The next section will explain how the respondents were recruited.
Sample recruitment
In order to find the right sample and sample size, the recruitment of bicultural LGBT+ adolescents and social workers was done via purposive sampling. This type of sampling is one of the most commonly used strategies in qualitative research, and refers to “the categorization of participants according to preselected criterion that are relevant to the research questions” (Lindlof & Taylor, 2011, p. 44). Moreover, according to Schwandt (1997) the idea behind purposeful sampling can be described as “the sites or cases are chosen because there may be a good reason to believe that what goes on there is critical in understanding some processes or concepts” (Schwandt, 1997, as cited in Lindlof & Taylor, 2011, p. 44).
Purposive sampling has a large range of different strategies. Therefore, this study focuses on criterion sampling as a method. This was due to several reasons. Firstly, this study is about the experience of bicultural adolescents with LGBT+ feelings have with their social environment and if social care is, was or had been helpful in their sexual orientation. Adolescents are defined as those who are between the years of puberty and adulthood, meaning the age from 11 up till 21 (Healthchildren.org, n.d.). For this study, participants were chosen based on their age, which was a key feature to the research questions. All bicultural adolescents were between the age of 11 and 21, with three exceptions of whom the age was one to two years above the set criteria. Moreover, since this study was about the influence of non-western cultures on sexual diversity, the diversity of cultures was also an important criterion. To have a good representation of the Dutch society, many cultures were present in choosing participants. However, it must be noted that it is impossible to represent every non-western culture in a relative small sample size. Lastly, for the adolescent respondents the criteria was set to have non-heterosexual feelings. This was due to the fact that every culture or religion, accepts the heterosexual form of love, whereas sexual diversity is mostly seen as deviant (Adamczyk & Pitt, 2009; Keuzenkamp, 2010).
Secondly, criterion sample was also used as method when selecting social and/or care workers as participants for this study. In order to become a social or care worker, one must have completed a study in social sciences, mainly in the direction of psychology and social work. This degree could be obtained at the schools of applied sciences and universities. To obtain as rich information on the topic of sexual diversity, it was important that the social and care workers had enough experience audience in question. For this reason a criterion was set on at least five years of experience in the field of social work. This way it was prevented that social and/or care workers had no to little descriptive experiences or perspectives with the LGBT+ theme, and thus not able to provide rich information.
Pro’s and con’s of criterion sampling as a form of purposive sampling
Using criterion sampling to recruit a sample of bicultural adolescents with LGBT+ feelings and social workers had a great advantage to assure quality in the data. This was due to the fact that with criterion sampling all participants, the adolescents and the social or care workers had to meet some predetermined criterion of importance (Patton, 1990). For social and/or care workers these criterion were ‘being in possession of a degree in social work or psychology’ and ‘years of experience’. For the bicultural adolescents with LGBT+ feelings these criterion were ‘being between the age of 11 and 21’, ‘identifying with another cultural background than Dutch’ and ‘having non-heterosexual feelings’.
Nevertheless, the use of predetermined criterions could have led to a level of bias. This is due to the fact that these criterions were made on the judgment of the researcher who took on an emic approach (Laerd dissertation, 2012). Moreover, according to research “this can make it difficult to defend the representativeness of the sample”, which means that it can become hard to convince the audience of the fact that the total sample of bicultural adolescents and social workers can achieve a certain generalization (Laerd dissertation, 2012, para. 1).
The eventual sample
The eventually used sample consisted of a total of 14 participants, which included 9 bicultural adolescents and five social workers. Although, this sample is of a relatively small size, there was rich information obtained from the interviews, and hence, it was a large enough sample to draw a valid conclusion about the experiences of bicultural LGBT+ adolescents and the perspective of social workers.
Moreover, to better examine the experiences that bicultural adolescents have with their social environment, the sample of adolescents consisted out of several cultural groups, such as Turkish, Antillean, Surinam, Cape Verdean, Somalia, and Afghanis. Also, this study tried to explore the influence of culture on sexual diversity. For this reason the attempt was made to includes as many identities as possible. The sample consisted out of the following identities: ‘Gay, Bisexual, Lesbian, Queer, Transgender, Gay and gender queer, and no preferred label’.
Procedures of interviews
As mentioned in previous sections, the research questions were answered based on the transcribed versions of the in-depth individual interviews. To ensure that the semi-structured interviews would go without problems two interview guides were made for structure and guidance (See Appendix 1 & 2). The first interview guide was used during the interviews with the bicultural LGBT+ adolescents and consisted of 26 open-ended questions. The second interview guide was used during the interviews with the social workers and consisted of 20 open-ended questions. The reason for two different interview guides was due to the fact that the first focused more on the experiences with the social environment of bicultural LGBT+ adolescents, whereas the second focused more on the experiences social workers have with the topic of sexual diversity and culture. As mentioned previously, the interview guides were used to ensure that the interviews would flow smoothly, during the interviews it self questions and topics slightly changed due to a better fit. If necessary, probes were used in order to gain more detailed answers and further dialogue. The questions in the interview guide were structured in a way from general to more sensitive and opinion-based questions. According to Boyce and Neale (2006) this appears to be limiting possible bias and agitation. However, the order of the questions used during the interview itself mainly depended on the answers and stories of the interviewees. Nevertheless, the participants were asked – at the end of the interview – if there were any suggestions for additional topics that had not been covered or if there were topics they wanted to delve in deeper. This ensured that bias was avoided as much as possible.
The data was collected in April and the beginning of May 2016 by face-to-face semi-structured interviews. To ensure that all the information was obtained in a clear manner, permission was asked to audiotape the interviews. In total, 14 interviews were conducted of which 9 with bicultural LGBT+ adolescents connected to the Hangout010 and five social workers from different organizations in Rotterdam. To make the spending time as much as convenient as possible, agreements were made to conduct the interviews during working hours between 11:00AM and 4:00PM. Moreover, all interviews took between one and 1,5 hours and since these were semi-structured, there was a great amount of opportunities for dialogue and theorizing without loosing a clear overview for later analysis. All interviews were held in Dutch since this was the preferred language used by all the participating interviewees.
The official interviews started off with a brief introduction about the interviewer, the study and the informed consent. During the interviews with the social workers there was asked in which way they wanted to be addressed. This is due to the fact that the Dutch language has different personal pronounces. For the bicultural LGBT+ participants this notion was irrelevant, since they were younger than the interviewer.
Ethical issues
To ensure the ethical aspects of this study, the participating bicultural LGBT+ adolescents and the social workers were asked to read and (voluntarily) sign an informed consent form. The informed consent (See Appendix 3) contained information about the goal of the research including the specific topic. Moreover, the risks and benefits of the research and the participant’s rights regarding their participation were included. This is also the main purpose of an informed consent form.
Especially, within the practice of social work ethical issues have to be emphasized. Due to the fact that social and care workers have a professional confidentially, they were not allowed to give any specific information about their clients, but could only give general information about their practice and real life examples without the use of confidential details. However, since an emic approach was taken, it must be emphasized that the professional confidentially during the interviews was not a topic of discussion. Meaning that the general orientation in the research is centered on the participant’s view of reality (Morey & Luthans, 1984).