Introduction

Just as social work practice is infused with empowering and collaborative ways of helping, social workers who conduct research can find ways to partner with those who are participating in their research and create projects that enrich the communities that they study. In order to better understand the experiences of lesbian, gay or bisexual (LGB) people within the healthcare and social services systems, and to fully explore health inequalities related to sexual orientation, social work researchers must overcome important difficulties inherent in trying to query these populations.

One widely used strategy for reaching these populations is non-probability internet surveying. In general, internet-based surveying has been noted for its ability to increase participation because of its ease of access, relative privacy and convenience for the participant (Dillman et al, 2009). Additionally, some researchers (Harris Interactive, 2010; Lever et al, 2008) have suggested that LGB populations are more likely to be active users of the internet than other populations. This argument focuses on the likelihood that LGB people may be more likely to seek personal information in the seeming privacy of their home than their heterosexual peers.

In 2011, I completed my doctoral degree with the successful defence of my dissertation: ‘Changes in the coming-out process over time’ (Dunlap, 2011). For this study, I defined coming out as the process that same-sex attracted people go through in order to develop a healthy sense of sexual orientation identity. Because same-sex attracted people often live in communities that are not fully validating of this aspect of identity, this process often involves understanding an important difference, incorporating that difference and often finding ways to detoxify this stigmatised difference (Cohler and Galatzer-Levy, 1996). Consistent with earlier researchers (for example Drasin et al, 2008), I also identified five age cohorts based on cultural events within the United States (US) that had influenced the degree of social stigma attached to same-sex attraction (see Figure 15.1).

I used an internet survey hosted on Surveymonkey.com. I chose a mixed-method study and collected demographic data, self-labels for sexual orientation, information about family support, narratives of coming out and data related to the ages that individuals experienced important milestones in the coming-out process (for example, How old were you when you first realised you had a same-sex attraction? How old were you when you first told someone inside your family about your same-sex attraction?).