Jump to content

Research Participation Request: Exploring the High School Experience of Asexual Individuals


Snao Cone

Recommended Posts

Snao Cone

This request is from Yuchen Yang at the University of Chicago

 

---

 

My name is Yuchen Yang, and I am a PhD student in the Department of Sociology at the University of Chicago. I am launching a research about asexuality for my qualifying paper. The research will investigate how did asexual people navigate peer culture in their high school environment (junior high and/or senior high) in the United States. I’m looking for interview participants for this study from now until November 2019.

 

Each interview will last for about 1 to 1.5 hour, and will be conducted either in person or via the Internet (Skype or Google Hangout) depending on the participants’ preference and location. During the interview, I will ask participants who have completed high school to recollect their memories, and participants can refuse to answer any questions during the interview if they don’t want to share that information. I will assign pseudonyms to all participants (unless the participant insist to be acknowledged by real name) and their schools to ensure the confidentiality of the interview.

 

You will be eligible for the study if you
(1) Are at least 18 years old, and
(2) Have attended high school in the United States.


If you fulfill both of the requirements, you’re welcome to participate in the research, regardless of how much importance you attach to asexuality as your identity.

 

 

If you are interested, please fill this Qualtrics form (http://ssd.az1.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_8pR0tG1tiXMqSsR) with your contact information
and basic demographic information, and I will contact you to schedule an interview. If you have any questions or concerns, please feel free to email me (yucheny@uchicago.edu) at any time. The Primary Investigator of this project is Professor Kristen Schilt (kschilt@uchicago.edu). The IRB protocol ID for this project is IRB18-0534.


Your participation is highly appreciated.

 

---

 

This research request has been approved by the Research Approval Board for advertising on AVEN.

 

Snao Cone

Resource and Education Director

(Note: I'm acting on behalf of our vacant Dedicated Research Contact position)

Link to post
Share on other sites

Cool,

 

I'm in.

 

You can PM here to set up the interview.

Link to post
Share on other sites
  • 3 months later...

Updating this request:

 

Quote

Research Participation Request: Looking for Asexual Men for Interview


My name is Yuchen Yang, and I am a PhD student in the Department of Sociology at the University of Chicago. I am conducting a research about asexuality and high school
experience. The research investigates how did asexual people navigate peer culture in their high school environment in the United States. After conducting 18 interviews, I decide to look for more asexual men for interview, because only 3 of my respondents identified as men.
 

I think it is very important to incorporate asexual men’s voices into research about asexuality. And I hope by talking to asexual men, I will be able to get a more holistic understanding of asexual individuals’ experiences in high school. I’m looking for interview participants for this study from now until November 2019. Each interview will last for about 1 to 1.5 hour, and will be conducted either in person or via the Internet (Skype or Google Hangout) depending on the participants’ preference and location. During the interview, I will ask participants who have completed high school to recollect their memories, and participants can refuse to answer any questions during the interview if they don’t want to share that information. I will assign pseudonyms to all participants (unless the participant insist to be acknowledged by real name) and their schools to ensure the confidentiality of the interview.

 

You will be eligible for the study if you
(1) Are at least 18 years old, and
(2) Have attended high school in the United States.
If you fulfill both of the requirements, you’re welcome to participate in the research, regardless of how much importance you attach to asexuality as your identity.

 

If you are interested, please fill this Qualtrics form with your contact information and basic demographic information, and I will contact you to schedule an interview. If you have any questions or concerns, please feel free to email me (yucheny@uchicago.edu) at any time. The Primary Investigator of this project is Professor Kristen Schilt (kschilt@uchicago.edu). The IRB protocol ID for this project is IRB18-0534. 


Your participation is highly appreciated.

 

Link to post
Share on other sites

High school peer pressure? That was so long ago I don't remember a lot. I don't recall any peer pressure about sex, but I didn't hang around much with anybody in high school.

Link to post
Share on other sites

Hmm. I'm wondering whether the results of this study, even by including asexual men, might still turn out to be biased or flawed in that, perhaps, only asexual men who didn't grow up bullied because of their sexual orientation might respond to the survey and be more willing to be interviewed than asexual men who grew up bullied and had traumatic things happen to them. For example, I know someone in real life who'd never agree to be interviewed or fill out surveys, because they don't like talking about what happened to them and because they don't like surveys or feel they're important.

Link to post
Share on other sites

That's definitely a weakness of survey-based research which goes beyond the topic at hand. Unfortunately studying things that people don't want to discuss or share can be difficult and problematic on many levels. It's one of the many reasons why ethical considerations such as confidentiality and maintaining anonymity of participants is essential to research design. A good researcher will be aware of the weaknesses of their study, and be able to discuss how this may have impacted on the results they achieved. 

@InquisitivePhilosopher, if you don't mind I'd like to pass your comment onto the researcher. I think they'd appreciate that consideration, and they may be able to reply to you. Alternatively, their email is in the original post, you can contact them directly. 

Link to post
Share on other sites
On 8/15/2018 at 4:39 PM, InquisitivePhilosopher said:

Hmm. I'm wondering whether the results of this study, even by including asexual men, might still turn out to be biased or flawed in that, perhaps, only asexual men who didn't grow up bullied because of their sexual orientation might respond to the survey and be more willing to be interviewed than asexual men who grew up bullied and had traumatic things happen to them. For example, I know someone in real life who'd never agree to be interviewed or fill out surveys, because they don't like talking about what happened to them and because they don't like surveys or feel they're important.

Hi InquisitivePhilosopher! I'm the researcher, and I really appreciate your comment - I think it's very important to keep this in mind while doing any kind of research. I also find it interesting that when I was writing a proposal for this study, a professor warned me the opposite. He said people who were not bullied for their sexuality might not be interested in doing interviews on this topic because it might not matter to them so much personally.

 

So far, my respondents have varied experiences in high school, a few were bullied, some were loners but weren't bullied, some were rather popular; a few had negative experiences in high school, whereas half of the rest had positive experiences, and the other half had "okay" experiences. Because my sample is not a probability sample anyway, I don't intend to make any statistical generalizations to say "X% of asexual people were bullied in high school." Given the research method I'm using (in-depth interviewing instead of fixed-choice survey), I'm more interested in learning the qualitative aspect, such as how did asexual individuals deal with bullying if they were bullied in high school? How was their experiences like if they were not bullied? Did they have other difficulty and, if so, how did they deal with that? Why were some asexual individuals bullied in high school while others were not?

 

So to my knowledge, the best I can do now is to cover as varied experiences as possible (which means I need to keep doing interviews), and not to claim a certain kind of experience as representative of asexual people's experience in high school as a whole.

 

I hope this could address your concerns, and thank you again for your insightful comments!

Link to post
Share on other sites

I was in high school in the US, in the early 70s. I was mostly a loner, with just a couple of friends at school (didn't spend much time with them outside of school). Had no girlfriends (just unspoken crushes) and never dated. I was a nerd, not athletic, not involved in any school activities or clubs. Mostly off doing my own thing, reading, art, and trying to avoid getting beat up (mostly at the hands of my older brother). My family was poor (so we got free lunches, which marked us as poor to others). I did get bullied occasionally, in the form of excess physical violence in PE during physical contact sports or as verbal abuse from a distance (shouted epithets like nerd, dork, etc., or about my pale skin (it was southern Calif. and everyone was supposed to want to be tanned). But for the most part I kept a very low profile and usually managed to blend into the background in a very large school (thousands of students). So over all, it wasn't the "best years of my life", and all I wanted to was to finish and get out of there. But it wasn't as bad for me as it was for some people.

Link to post
Share on other sites

Archived

This topic is now archived and is closed to further replies.

×
×
  • Create New...