Received in the inbox today – if you are lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgendered and living in Ireland please read on and click on the link below and complete the survey.
GLEN in collaboration with BeLonG To Youth Project have commissioned researchers from Trinity College Dublin and University College Dublin to conduct the first significant study of LGBT mental health and well-being in Ireland. The study is funded by the National Office for Suicide Prevention. The aim is to identify risk and resilience factors for LGBT mental health and suicide and to develop a model of best practice for LGBT mental health promotion and suicide prevention in an Irish context.
The online survey component of the study will explore various aspects of LGBT people’s lives in Ireland such as school, work, coming out, use of health care services and mental health. The online survey will go live on Thursday 1st November 2007 and will run for approximately two months.
Having completed the survey myself today I can only recommend it in terms of the data it will collect to help develop services for the lgbt community in Ireland.
Well we all like to support LGBT lives, don’t we? Decided to be a good citizen, and play my part (sounds like a line from Starship Troopers). The survey was not bad and I echo MP’s call to contribute. My experience of doing it left me with the desire to ask more, and think more about our lives in contemporary Ireland.
It could have been given more attention to what sociologists call agency, that is, it could have asked some more questions within this study. It is a pity that the survey did not: ask about income within the work questions (which would have connected with earlier work on poverty); it did not ask about unemployment/welfare issues which I thought would be crucial. The schools question was utterly irrelevant to someone of my age (29), as there was nothing doing when I was in school (prior to 1993), so there could have been some reframing there to ask about subculture. While it asks about coming out, it framed it in terms of being out or not out, and implied being in the closet was ‘less’, so I feel it could have explored dilemmas more thoroughly. The survey assiduously avoids politics: it did not explore how LGBT people live beyond the scene, or how respondents ‘do’ LGBT politics or relate to activism. Ability to access politics, make our voices heard, is an important way in which we feel part of it all… while I can ‘vent’ here on this blog or on online bulletin board communities, not everyone can/ will do so. I guess policy analysts didn’t want to be seen as political…
I accept what Sean is saying above – that the survey could have asked many more important questions – BUT It’s my understanding that the focus was on mental health and well being so in I think some of the extra add ons that sean wanted would not have been entirely appropriate. (given that the focus is mental health)
I agree with Sean that the survey didn’t go deep enough behind the (gay) scene – however there were some places where it did allow people to explain this a little – e.g. name groups – for example my answer to this was to list as many and as wide as possible – sports groups, health groups, political groups.
Overall I support the survey – but do have one complaint (I may be wrong about this) – the survey is only available online – so the main respondents will tend to be generally well educated, young, and middle class – in the sense that they are computer literate (and this is gnerally speaking the charactersitics of computer users) – Personally I object to online only surveys because of this – the data will tend not to reflect experiences of older people, less well educated people and less well off people
I do very strongly also agree with Sean that the previous poverty work of GLEN from 1995 needs to be updated. I was reading some equality material from IT Sligo which stated that sexual orientation and poverty were not really linked – I’m paraphrasing here – anyway – I’m sort of agreeing with Sean and disagreeing at the same time
I do love the liquid modern ambivalence Ian! In a sense, I am suggesting the obvious: much more research needed on Irish LGBT populations and more focus on letting people speak for themselves. So yes update the 1995 work, but let people speak for themselves more. Reports that end up talking about stats actually talk about no body. Stories about people, even a few people, make the dilemmas about social life into reality. The vignette often cited by activists relates to how MGQ was partly persuaded by Phil Moore’s story as the mother of a gay son (sorry to drag you up again D!) but it ‘works’ more than citing stats.
You’re right that a crucial weakness is that the survey is organised online. I am only supposing, but it will miss out on much about the link between poverty and illness/mental health problems. While I take the point about the focus of the survey, it would not have taken much effort (given its online, responses could be captured by data retrieval mechanisms etc) to enhance the data’s scope. It is rare enough to find original research about “us”, and so the researchers should have been a bit more ambitious without losing out.
I would not have had an issue with answering a few more questions to capture more data, and, as Maman Poulet can attest, I love spaces in which to vent my feelings!
The LGBT Lives survey will compliment the SHOUT Mental health survey in Northern Ireland, which was conducted in 2003. We will at least now, have the possibility for an all-island response to LGBT Mental health issues.
Sean as maman poulet can equally attest I am very far from ambivalent – indecisive maybe!
You’re right too about hearing what people have to say – I really thought that the ICCL document was powerful when it gave us personal details
Hello all
I am one of the researchers on this study. Thank you for your feedback on the survey, it is really useful and important. One of the main issues regarding a survey like this is trying to balance the information requirements of the study and the length of time it will take someone to complete the survey.
The survey forms one aspect of the study, we are also conducting in-depth interviews with people to go into more detail on some of the issues you point out – Issues around income, poverty, politics etc. which are hugely important.
Again we will be trying to interview people from across the socio-economic spectrum, to capture the breadth of experience that you describe – so thanks for your feedback.
Maman Poulet » New report launched on LGBT Mental Health issues // Feb 2, 2009 at 16:00
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