LGBTQ Family: An Interdisciplinary Journal

Lessons learned from conducting research with LGBTQ+ families

Researchers seeking to understand LGBTQIA+ families have expanded the epistemological boundaries of relationship and family science. Scholars conducting research on LGBTQIA+ families have had to navigate the legacies of cis-, hetero-, endo-, and allonormative research traditions and assumptions embedded in research questions, theories, instruments, analytical methods, and academic structures of their fields. In doing so, these researchers found creative and innovative ways to engage with LGBTQIA+ communities, center LGBTQIA+ experiences, and build trust in contexts of societal and scientific marginalization. These innovations have shaped a vibrant field, yet much of what researchers learned along the way in conducting their research remains invisible in the published record. This lack of informal knowledge transmission makes it difficult for active researchers to learn lessons from each other’s experiences and to mentor future researchers interested in studying LGBTQIA+ families.

 

This special issue seeks to address this gap in the literature by focusing on lessons learned when conducting LGBTQIA+ family studies. More specifically, this special issue seeks to publish essays describing lessons learned and innovative, creative solutions across a study’s research cycle that can move LGBTQIA+ relationship and family science further – and the challenges, solutions, and surprises that gave rise to them.

 

Essay format:

For this special issue, we invite essay contributions that are

1.      anchored in a specific a research endeavor examining LGBTQIA+ families, and,

2.      centered on concrete lessons that can inform future research and aid fellow researchers.

 

Research endeavors may involve quantitative, qualitative, or mixed-methods data collection and analysis with participants, or formal research syntheses such as scoping reviews and systematic reviews with or without meta-analysis. Data collection must have commenced (or completed) at time of abstract submission. Contributions focusing on LGBTQIA+ individuals without consideration of their relational or family systems, those based solely on narrative or unsystematic literature reviews, or reflections spanning multiple, independent studies or a broader career trajectory will not be considered.

 

Contributions should follow an essay-like rather than IMRaD (Introduction, Methods, Results, and Discussion) structure. Concrete takeaways and practical suggestions for other LGBTQIA+ family researchers should form their core. Personal experiences and reflections or discussion of the study’s findings can provide context, but the focus should be on insights that readers can apply to their own research. Lessons may emerge from challenges, unexpected turns, adaptations, or approaches that worked particularly well. Discussion of study results is only appropriate if it serves as a basis for a key lesson or takeaway for other readers.

 

 

 

Definition of LGBTQIA+ families:

Within this Special Issue, we define research on LGBTQIA+ families as studies about families in which at least one member is LGBTQIA+ and where LGBTQIA+ identities or experiences are meaningfully connected to the research question or study context. This definition encompasses diverse forms of intimate or familial relational systems in which LGBTQIA+ individuals are embedded in, included (but not limited to): Multigenerational families (e.g LGBTQIA+ parents, LGBTQIA+ children, or both), intimate relationships, chosen families, families of origin, multispecies families (i.e., LGBTQIA+ individuals in their relationships with companion animals), or emerging forms of intimate or familial connection, such as human-AI relationships.

 

Submissions may focus on, but are not limited to, any of the following topics across a study’s research process:

 

·         Region and sociopolitical events: How did changes in legislation, political leadership, or public discourse affect your study? What did you need to adapt when a major sociopolitical event occurred during your research? What should researchers consider when conducting a study in a specific region or sociopolitical context?

·         Funding and academic incentivization structures: How did you secure (or lose) funding against a backdrop of nationwide budget cuts? How did you balance the demands of funders, institutions, and academic career incentives with the needs of LGBTQIA+ communities?

·         Constructs, topics, and theoretical perspectives: How did you adapt an established theoretical model when it did not fully account for LGBTQIA+ families or relationships? How did you adapt established concepts to relational configurations that challenge conventional assumptions – for example, studying coparenting in families with more than two parents, dyadic coping with LGBTQIA+-related stressors, or human–animal attachment through queer theoretical perspectives? How did you integrate an intersectional perspective into the study? How were potentially stigmatizing or taboo topics, such as mental health difficulties or substance use, studied without reinforcing deficit-based assumptions about LGBTQIA+ families?

·         Measurement: How did you represent relationship and family constellations with more (or fewer) than two partners/parents in questionnaires, interviews, or observational tasks? How did you address intersectionality explicitly through interview questions or standardized questionnaires? How did you assess sensitive experiences such as discrimination, stigma, or minority stress without unnecessarily increasing participant burden or distress? How did you adapt measures developed for cisgender, heterosexual, endosexual, and allosexual populations to LGBTQIA+ parenting and romantic constellations?

·         Recruitment: What recruitment strategies worked particularly well for the population that you studied? What strategies helped you navigate social media recruitment in the face of hateful or hostile responses?

·         Data analysis: How did you incorporate intersectionality into the analysis? How did you model experiences of larger relational systems outside of dyadic conceptions? How did you conduct psychometric assessments of new or adapted measures, given often small sample sizes? How did you handle small subgroups in analysis in order to avoid erasure or lumping together distinct identities? How did you adapt existing coding manuals for observational tasks based on dyadic (two parents) or triadic (two parents and a child) assumptions? How did you represent multiple voices within a family or relationship without privileging one participant’s account? How did you balance deductive and inductive coding when established theoretical frameworks did not fully capture participants’ experiences?

·         Dissemination in traditional academic outlets: How did you respond when reviewers or editors questioned the relevance, rigor, or generalizability of your study? How did you handle reviewer comments that reflected cis-, hetero-, endo-, or allocentric assumptions? How did you navigate publication decisions when findings could be misinterpreted or potentially stigmatizing? How did you respond when reviewers suggested framing LGBTQIA+ families through a deficit-oriented lens? Which adaptations did you make when presenting your study to audiences unfamiliar with LGBTQIA+ family structures or terminology? How did you respond to hostile, dismissive, or stigmatizing reactions to your study at conferences?

·         Co-creation of knowledge and community dissemination: How did you incorporate participatory approaches into the study design? How did you recruit, support, and compensate community advisors? How did you acknowledge and address power hierarchies and differentials? How did you give results back to the community in a meaningful way outside of traditional journal outlets? How did you disseminate findings when the results were sensitive, potentially stigmatizing, or difficult to communicate in simplified formats?

·         Data protection and privacy concerns: What tensions did you encounter between open science practices and data protection requirements during the study and its dissemination, and how did you handle these? How did you address participants’ concerns about privacy and data protection? How did you protect participants’ privacy when their identities, family structures, or relational configurations made them potentially identifiable even after conventional de-identification?

 

We welcome submissions from researchers across career stages: From early-career researchers sharing lessons from their first research endeavor to senior scholars reflecting on a particularly insightful or formative study. We particularly encourage researchers from historically or currently underrepresented regions, research contexts, or social locations to share their experiences and perspectives.