Innovative sampling and participant recruitment in sexuality research

Abstract

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Identities and Identifications: Changes in Metropolitan Bisexual Men's Attitudes and Experiences

“…We contend that this is attributable to two key factors: 1) declining homophobia has had a profound effect on the sexual identities of young people in terms of their more positive realizations of being bisexual and a shift toward bisexual identity having less importance in their lives (see Ghaziani, 2014;Savin-Williams, 2005); and 2) different recruitment procedures -moving away from relying on bisexual communities, LGBT groups and counseling services -means that the bias toward 22 samples with particularly negative experiences is not found in our research (McCormack, 2014).…”

“…As McCormack (2014) argues, this has led to a skewing of bisexual research to those that have had particularly negative experiences; an effect worsened by the atypical nature of bisexual communities in relation to the broader bisexual population (author citation). In order to avoid this issue, we did not involve these groups in the recruitment process.…”

“…It is also important to highlight that our recruitment procedures -calling publically for bisexual men for researchwould be more likely to recruit those with at least some attachment to bisexuality as an 12 identity category. The difference in our recruitment strategy also makes direct comparison with other research on bisexual identities somewhat more complex-although it also highlights the issues with relying on particular groups from which to recruit participants (see also McCormack, 2014).…”

An Exploratory Study of a New Kink Activity: “Pup Play”

“…The sample is limited to these demographics due to the exploratory nature of this study, and because kink cultures are often segregated into heterosexual and sexual minority communities (Newmahr, 2011). In order to recruit participants from different social and sexual networks, we eschewed usual techniques for participant recruitment, such as LGBT groups or community 'munches,' as they can result in a sample from a small number of social networks (see McCormack, 2014). Instead, we recruited participants from across the UK using social media, and then snowball sampled from these different subcultural community groups.…”

Tips for research recruitment: The views of sexual minority youth

“…Lee, 2002;Lucassen et al, 2013;Sherriff et al, 2011). Past research focused on overcoming the barriers associated with recruiting participants from minority populations focuses primarily on sexual minority adults or ethnic minority individuals (McCormack, 2014;Silvestre et al, 2006), with this body of literature indicating that minority communities have low levels of trust in researchers (Fouad et al, 2004;Nápoles-Springer et al, 2000;Silvestre et al, 2006). This paper reports on the views of a group of sexual minority youth who had previously taken part in a study (the Rainbow SPARX project) about what had enabled and encouraged their participation in research.…”