Barbara Dennis

Gender Differences in Heterosexual College Students' Conceptualizations and Indicators of Sexual Consent: Implications for Contemporary Sexual Assault Prevention Education

Because sexual assault is often defined in terms of nonconsent, many prevention efforts focus on promoting the clear communication of consent as a mechanism to reduce assault. Yet little research has specifically examined how sexual consent is being conceptualized by heterosexual college students. In this study, 185 Midwestern U.S. college students provided responses to open-ended questions addressing how they define, communicate, and interpret sexual consent and nonconsent. The study aimed to assess how college students define and communicate consent, with particular attention to gender differences in consent. Results indicated no gender differences in defining consent. However, there were significant differences in how men and women indicated their own consent and nonconsent, with women reporting more verbal strategies than men and men reporting more nonverbal strategies than women, and in how they interpreted their partners consent and nonconsent, with men relying more on nonverbal indicators of consent than women. Such gender differences may help to explain some misunderstandings or misinterpretations of consent or agreement to engage in sexual activity, which could partially contribute to the occurrence of acquaintance rape; thus, a better understanding of consent has important implications for developing sexual assault prevention initiatives.

What Does It Mean when an Ethnographer Intervenes

This paper explores what it means to engage as an ethical researcher in the conduct of critical ethnography. During the years in which this critical ethnography of new language learners in a midwestern high school, the ethnographer actively participated in the life of the site. This paper poses the question of what such active involvement means for research ethics. Much of the literature on research ethics deals with Internal Review Boards standards, but this paper takes a reflective, ethnographic look at the researchers own ethical practices in order to articulate and examine the underlying principles entailed in the decisions to intervene or not in the ongoing life of the site.

Acting Up: Theater of the Oppressed as Critical Ethnography

In this paper the author reports on the use of Theater of the Oppressed in a long-term critical ethnography. Building on the work of performative ethnographers, she reviews the literature on the uses of drama in qualitative research and explores the traditional research lines that are blurred in the process. More important, she details the experiences collecting and analyzing data using Theater of the Oppressed. In other published accounts of performative ethnography, data collection is emphasized and data analysis is not usually discussed, in part, because the line between data collection and analysis is blurred in the use of theater as inquiry. The author not only examines that blurring but suggests a method of analysis that others might find useful. The study focused on the integration of English language learners in a Midwestern U.S. high school. The author used Theater of the Oppressed with teachers to explore their role in the bullying activities of students. The analysis reveals changes in awareness witnessed through the drama.

Ethical dilemmas in the field: the complex nature of doing education ethnography

Education ethnographers face the question of ethics in at least two general domains an academic institutional domain and the domain of interactions with our participants. The academic institutional domain is monitored largely through accountability to Institutional Review Boards (IRB) with somewhat indirect monitoring through the peer-review process. This institutional domain is garnering a burgeoning interest amongst education researchers, particularly with respect to discussing the practices and effectiveness of IRB for qualitative inquiry. Education ethnographers continue to face hurdles in satisfying and attending to the basic standardised ethical expectations outlined by their institutions’ boards. IRB ethical requirements for ethical research provide important limits and guidelines for the protection of human subjects in the research, though often the spirit of the ethical intentions is not well manifested in the rigidity of IRB guidelines. Many more ethical questions emerge than one could address through formal institutional reviews and even IRB aspects become more nuanced in the field. Education ethnographers place themselves in the practical domain of everyday life where the course of one’s ethical actions is much more interdependently and situationally forged not prior to the conduct of research, but as a part of the process itself. Many more ethical questions emerge than one could address through formal institutional reviews. Behaving ethically in the field is a complex, dynamic endeavour for education ethnographers. The articles in this special issue take up ethical questions by looking at concrete practices and the challenges and opportunities that arise when researchers explore what it means to behave ethically in the field when doing education ethnography. Establishing what one ought to have done and what lessons have been learned requires reflection on the part of the researcher. As will be obvious from the papers, such reflection is neither independent of IRB expectations nor fully satisfied by them. Each of the authors uses the words reflection or reflexivity to talk about how an ethnographer takes an ethical position within and in their own field practices. Each of the papers exemplify a reflective process illustrating the use of dilemmas, questions, challenges and thinking through the strategies to resolve them in the best interests of affected participants. A second feature of this issue is the way dialogue/ communication and caring in situational interactions with participants structures the ethics on the ground. We have little in the literature that explores, in concrete ways, how ethical reflection and reflexivity, is identified in the situated, interactive context of research practice. However, from these articles we learn that there are communicative and dialogic principles which structure ethnographers’ ability to judge their own research activities as ethical or in need of some ethical guidance. Ethnography and Education Vol. 5, No. 2, June 2010, 123 127

My ‘Fat Girl Complex’: a preliminary investigation of sexual health and body image in women of size

Women of size who inhabit non-normative bodies may have different experiences with body image and sexual health than women of average body size. In this exploratory study, we interviewed four women of size recruited from a larger mixed-methodological study of body image and sexuality. Each woman was interviewed twice on topics of body image, sexuality and sexual health. Reconstructive Horizon Analysis was used to analyse the content of the interviews. Women who expressed that their bodies had inherent personal and social value regardless of size did not articulate connections between body size and their sexual health. However, those women who looked externally for validation of their attractiveness struggled with acceptance of their sexuality and bodies and spoke of ways in which their body size and appearance hindered them from having the sexually healthy lives that they wanted. Findings highlight two important components of womens sexual health as participants related them to body image: the right to pleasure and the right to engage only in wanted sexual activity. Participants described how negative body attitudes affected both of these aspects of their sexual health. Interventions targeting weight-based stigma may offer a means of indirectly promoting sexual health and autonomy in women.

How Condom Discontinuation Occurs: Interviews With Emerging Adult Women.

We have almost no data on how and when couples stop using condoms. This qualitative study investigated the process of condom discontinuation. From November 2013 to April 2014, a total of 25 women living in a college town in the Midwest, ages 18 to 25, participated in semistructured interviews centered around three domains: partner interactions, contraceptive use, and sexually transmitted infection (STI) prevention. Analysis followed a critical qualitative research orientation. Participants described actively seeking the best options to prevent pregnancy, perceiving condom discontinuation in favor of hormonal methods as a smart decision, and reported wanting to discontinue using condoms due to physical discomfort. Oftentimes, nonverbal communication around contextual instances of condom unavailability paved the way for discontinuation. Participants indicated the decision to stop using condoms was neither deliberate nor planned. Condom discontinuation rarely occurred at one point in time; instead, it was preceded by a period of occasional use. Even after participants described themselves as not using condoms, sporadic condom use was normal (typically related to fertility cycles). This study provides a more detailed understanding of how and why emerging adults negotiate condom discontinuation, thereby enhancing our ability to design effective condom continuation messages. Attention should be paid to helping emerging adults think more concretely about condom discontinuation.

Establishment of safety paradigms and trust in emerging adult relationships

Abstract There is a critical need to understand the interplay between relationship trust and public health outcomes. The purpose of this study was to develop an understanding of emerging adult women’s processes of establishing trust in sexual relationships. Twenty-five women aged 18–24 years participated in semi-structured interviews. Throughout the interviews, women compared and contrasted experiences in which they felt comfortable engaging in sexual intercourse with a partner versus times in which they did not feel comfortable. Analysis was based on a critical qualitative research orientation. When asked to speak to instances when they felt comfortable having sex, most women spoke about relationship trust. Many participants conceptualised trust based on past experiences with bad relationships or sexual violence. Based on their previous experiences of feeling unsafe or undervalued, emotional and physical security became prioritised in relationship development. Trust was developed through friendship, communication over time, and through shared life experiences. This research is among the first to qualitatively investigate trust formation and other impersonal dynamics related to sexual health decision-making. Insights from this study should be translated into future action by public health practitioners to promote healthy sexual relationships and communication about sexual health topics as a form of trust building.

Understanding Participant Experiences: Reflections of a Novice Research Participant:

There is very little empirical work on the experiences research participants have engaging in qualitative inquiry; yet, qualitative researchers often think of themselves as forging critical relationships with their participants. It seems that perhaps the actual experiences of participants in the research process are being taken largely for granted. I want to problematize research participants being taken for granted. In this article, I analyze the existing literature and report on insights from my own experience as a participant in two interview studies. The article offers insights regarding participant experiences that are not well captured in the existing literature.

Theory of the Margins: Liberating Research in Education

Galileo studied physics through observation and experimentation rather than through moral and verbal instruction, as was the Western European tradition in the sixteenth century. Arguing against the politically powerful Catholic perspective of the time, Galileo supported Copernicus’ theory that the Earth revolved around the Sun. As he was opposing the mainstream knowledge of the time, Galileo was marginalized. Throughout Western history there have been people whose research was marginalized, those who did research in the fray. In some cases their work moved to the center (as with Galileo), in other cases it did not. Sometimes research is marginalized because its findings challenge the status quo in ways that are just not accepted. At other times, research is marginalized because its methods are not considered valid or reliable. In yet other times, research is marginalized because it attends to questions and persons whose life experiences are not considered important or worthy of research by those invested in the mainstream. Galileo’s research not only offered new facts from which to contemplate the workings of the universe, but also liberated our scientific investigations from the hegemony of existing European religious dogma. The focus of this chapter involves describing and promoting a link between research that is conducted at the margins and the potential for emancipatory effects.

Progressing through the Haze in Science and Mathematics Education Research: Contemporary Use of Spradley’s Qualitative Inquiry in Two Case Studies

Spradleys developmental research sequence (DRS) has been used primarily for ethnographic studies. However, this ethnographic tool has been employed in case studies without an examination of the merits of its modification. In this article the authors discuss how adapting analytical steps of DRS to case studies can be methodologically advantageous. They found that transforming Spradleys ethnographic approach rendered it useful for articulating implicit conceptualizations in case studies, one from science education and the other from mathematics education. Investigating this issue will necessarily involve looking closely at the substantive aspects of the case studies themselves. Findings from the case studies and results from the methodological investigation are reported along with suggestions for future research.