Segundo periodo escolar, al concluir el tercer grado de primaria, entre 8 y 9 años de edad
3. actitudes hacia el estudio de las matemáticas
4.4.1 Community venues sampling
The most frequently used method for recruiting LGBT individuals is through sources in the LGBT community. Community venues sampling (CVS) refers to methods ranging from samples of convenience, snowball, and purposive sampling within LGBT community organisations (Rothblum, 2007). This approach to sampling has a long history in LGBT research, as researchers used contacts in the community to access a population that was otherwise impossible to locate (Rothblum, 2007). One of the strongest critiques of CVS is that researchers using this approach can only reach individuals who are engaged with the LGBT community. Consequently, individuals who are not ‘out’ in their communities are overlooked.
A combination of convenience and purposive sampling was employed to recruit adult women for in-depth interviews from not only LGBT services and organisations, but also from counselling, DV, and SV support services. A convenience sample is one that is simply available to the researcher by virtue of its accessibility (Bryman, 2004), and has been shown to increase opportunities to access hard-to-reach populations (Flanagan & Hancock, 2010). Purposive sampling enables the researcher to identify participants who are likely to provide data that are detailed and relevant to the research question (Oliver, 2006) so that the specific aims of the research are met (Robson, 2011).
Due to the highly sensitive nature of the study, a decision was taken that it would be inappropriate to ask participants to suggest others for an interview. IPA is a sensitive topic, primarily because of the potential threat it poses to the women who agree to share their experiences (Cowles, 1988). For this reason, the primary focus during interviews was on the participant and their unique experience of IPA. Participants were not asked if they knew of other women with a similar experience as this would create a distraction and pull the narrative away from their personal experience. Although snowball sampling has proven popular with sensitive research concerning hard-to-reach populations (Renzetti & Lee, 1993), this is not the case in the current study. Like previous Irish research (Miner, 2003), this study found that snowball sampling was not an option.218 One participant had never disclosed the abuse occurring in her relationship with anyone, apart from the researcher, and most women were not aware of others in the same position.
As previously indicated, attempts were made to access interviewees through contacts established through the Service Providers Forum, that included professionals from LGBT, DV, SV, and counselling support services. However, only one participant was recruited from a DV service using these sampling techniques.219 As will be shown, recruitment of participants occurred mainly via online resources, such as LGBT social groups members mailing list (four women), LGBT social media platforms (three women), and a Facebook advertisement campaign (1 woman).
4.4.2 Inclusion criteria
The study population belong to a historically marginalised group (Higgins, et al., 2011). In addition to being part of a sexual minority, participants were recruited based on having a previous experience of IPA. There would be a certain degree of vulnerability associated with those experiences. Therefore, the study’s inclusion and exclusion criteria were designed to minimise additional harm. Only adult women who were no longer involved in an abusive relationship were recruited for an interview. Like previous same sex IPA research, the criteria for inclusion was based on a woman being at a minimum of six months
218 Susan Miner’s (2003) unpublished doctoral thesis examining lesbian IPA also found that snowball
sampling was not an option during the recruitment phase of the research.
219 One participant contacted the researcher after she saw the promotional poster in a domestic violence
to one year removed from an abusive relationship (Barnes, 2011; Donovan & Hester, 2014). Women were eligible to participate in the study if they were over 18 years of age, identified as lesbian, bisexual, or queer, and had experience of intimate partner abuse with a female in a previous same sex relationship.
4.4.3 Locating the sample
Recruitment by a trusted service provider has proven to be effective in previous same sex IPA studies in terms of access and the referral of participants (Bornstein et al., 2006; Hardesty, et al., 2011; Irwin, 2008). A multipronged recruitment strategy was used to promote the study and increase the potential to access a hard-to-reach population. In addition to the previous recruitment strategies outlined, a promotional research poster was designed and advertised within LGBT, domestic and sexual violence services, and within office spaces providing counselling and therapy type support options. The poster was also advertised on LGBT social media platforms and within LGBT print/ online media. Finally, permission was granted by the main administrator of an online Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, and Queer (LGBTQ) social networking group to email over one-thousand of their members.
An extensive effort was made to contact LGBT organisations throughout Ireland. These support groups assisted with the promotion of the study poster. While no LGBT organisation could directly refer a participant for an interview, the organisations proved very supportive with promoting the study poster on their available media platforms, and within their monthly newsletter. One LGBT group provided a quiet space to conduct an interview. Overall, three women were recruited after seeing the promotional poster on LGBT organisations Facebook page and Twitter feed.
Contact was made with a non-heterosexual women’s social networking club that operates online. The network has over one-thousand members. Permission was obtained to email members of the site, to make members aware of the study and to seek assistance with recruitment. Four women contacted the researcher and were interviewed following this recruitment strategy.
Finally, one participant was recruited to the study via Facebook (FB). During the recruitment phase, a period of eight weeks passed where no contact was made to participate in the study.220 A decision was taken to bolster the recruitment of participants via a promotional advertisement option within FB.221 The internet has been found to be a fertile ground for scholars (Gill & Elder, 2012). As the world’s largest social networking site, FB has two major advantages which make it an appealing platform for social science research: 1) its massive international user base presents a large pool of potential participants, and 2) the social nature of FB encourages users to share content which can assist with ‘viral’ participant recruitment (Rife et a., 2016, p. 70).222 However, conducting research using FB presents challenges related to the degree which the results obtained through this medium can be generalised to the population (Ibid, 2016). Moreover, internet access has been found to be more heavily concentrated among middle and upper- class individuals (Jones & Fox, 2009) and the young (Jansen, 2010). Having said that, Rife et al, (2016) assert that these issues are not unique to research conducted over the internet, and as with the make-up of the current study’s sample, non-representative samples while a consistent feature in social research, is not preoccupied with the parameters of probability sampling techniques.
The FB page to promote the research was created in November 2015 and remained live until June 2016.223 The promotional page was used a vehicle to promote the research in a variety of ways. For example, a member of the Service Providers Forum, a counsellor, wrote a blog about the study which was uploaded to the FB page. 224 Other strategies to promote participant engagement using FB included: promoting the study’s research poster, two participants provided testimonials covering their experience of engaging with the study, a promotional piece to assist with recruitment written by an LGBT online
220 At this point, the researcher had completed 2 interviews.
221See Appendix 6 Illustration of FB promotional page. Also, link to study’s Face book promotional page:
https://www.facebook.com/Female-Same-Sex-Domestic-Violence-779502758821269/
222 As of April 2012, 475 Facebook-related articles were published in the social sciences (Wilson, Gosling, & Graham, 2012) cited in (Rife et al/, 2016) Retrieved 29th May 2017 from
http://psych.wustl.edu/robertwilson/index.html
223 See Appendix 7 History of published posts connected to the Facebook page. See link below:
https://www.facebook.com/Female-Same-Sex-Domestic-Violence-
779502758821269/publishing_tools/?section=PUBLISHED_POSTS&sort[0]=published_time_descending
224 See Appendix 8 Illustration of a Service Providers blog to promote the study. See link below:
magazine,225 the promotion of a podcast discussing the research, and the advertising of an information seminar organised by the researcher to review the study’s preliminary findings.226 Finally, the FB page was used make potential participants aware of who the researcher was, and who they would be contacting should they choose to participate in the study.
Despite all of the above-mentioned promotional strategies to increase participation, this recruitment strategy was not successful. The one participant recruited via FB occurred when the researcher created a FB advertisement, using the study’s promotional poster, which targeted non-heterosexual adult women, living in Ireland. The research engaged with various promotional advertisements to try to recruit younger women to the sample. On two separate occasions, non-heterosexual women between the ages of 18-25 years were targeted via an FB advertisement. This strategy proved unsuccessful. Research demonstrates that violence and abuse is an issue for young dating adults, both heterosexual (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 2006) and non-heterosexual (Halpern, et al., 2004). Reasons for non-participation of young Irish women in the current study could be explained by studies that demonstrate, young (and older) adults in first time same sex relationships may not recognise their experience as abuse, or due to a lack of relationship experience, may consider the abuse to be a ‘normal’ part of being in a relationship (Donovan & Hester, 2014; Ristock, 2003).
In tandem with an interpretative phenomenological analysis, the following section discusses aspects of the interview processes that include the research techniques both during and post-interview, and data analysis.
225 See Appendix 9 Illustration of Eile magazines promotional online article. See link below:
https://eile.ie/2016/02/20/irish-females-needed-for-same-sex-domestic-violence-study/
226 On June 30th, 2016, the researcher organised a lunchtime seminar to present preliminary findings from
4.5 Interview process, techniques & data analysis