Search

This article explores how advancements in equality rights combine with attitudinal changes in UK society and LGBTQ communities to impact on the experience of lesbian mothers over a generation. The author reflects on ordinary moments where sexuality and relationships become meaningful and situate emotions at the heart of analytical enquiry because it is through emotional interactions that micro–macro networks of relations intersect. Autobiography is combined with original data from empirical research to provide analytical entry points, which aims to advance understanding and also facilitate reflection on how we understand and come to know queer parenthood. Whilst there are now many routes into lesbian motherhood and the stigma of queer kinship is diminishing, this article demonstrates the need to problematize the prevailing narratives of coupledom that are emerging and tease apart the conflation of temporal progression, progressive rights and narratives of progress.

This letter seeks to synthesise methodological challenges encountered in a cohort of Wellcome Trust-funded research projects focusing on sexualities and health. The ten Wellcome Trust projects span a diversity of gender and sexual orientations and identities, settings; institutional and non-institutional contexts, lifecourse stages, and explore a range of health-related interventions. As researchers, we originate from a breadth of disciplinary traditions, use a variety of research methods and data sources. Despite this breadth, four common themes are found across the projects: (i) inclusivity, representations and representativeness, (ii) lumping together of diverse groups, (iii) institutions and closed settings (iv) ethical and governance barriers.

Objective: This study reports on the operationalization and testing of the newly developed Relationship Quality (RQ) scale, designed to assess an individual’s perception of his or her RQ in their current partnership. Methods: Data were generated through extended sampling from an original U.K.-based research project, Enduring Love? Couple relationships in the 21st century. This mixed methods study was designed to investigate how couples experience, understand, and sustain their long-term relationships. This article utilizes the cross-sectional, community sample (N = 8,132) from this combined data set, drawn primarily from the United Kingdom, United States, and Australia. A two-part approach to scale development was employed. An initial 15-item pool was subjected to exploratory factor analysis leading into confirmatory factor analysis using structural equation modeling. Results: The final 9-item scale evidenced convergent construct validity and known-groups validity along with strong reliability. Conclusion: Implications for future research and professional practice are discussed.

The Secrets of Enduring Love is the only relationship self-help book to be based on an extensive survey and interview study with people in long-term relationships. The book focuses on what we know about what they actually do to sustain their relationships. It’s illustrated with quotes and examples from the research throughout, as well as including activities from it to help readers to reflect on their own relationships and to try things out.\ud \ud One of the key messages from the research is that different things work for different people, and at different times in the relationship. For this reason the book focuses on the diversity of practices that readers might bring into their own relationships; assisting them to recognise the small things which they may be already doing but which ordinarily go by unnoticed, and offering them a helping hand to find out what works best for them.

This entry provides an overview of qualitative LGBTQ research. It begins by mapping out the qualities and character of studies that use this approach with particular attention to psycho-social research. It then highlights how reflexivity, the iterative process of self-identity making, has informed qualitative research, influencing both understandings of sexualities and also the underlying methodologies and research methods used. Finally, it considers how “the everyday” and a practices approach have generated significant insight on the materialities (lived experiences) and emotionality in qualitative research on LGBTQ lives.

Everyday moments and ordinary gestures create the texture of long-term couple relationships. This article demonstrates how, by refining our research tools and conceptual imagination, we can better understand these vibrant and visceral relationships. The ‘moments approach’ that we propose provides a lens through which to focus in on couple’s everyday experiences to gain insight on processes, meanings, and cross-cutting analytical themes whilst ensuring that feelings and emotionality remain firmly attached.

This letter seeks to synthesise methodological challenges encountered in a cohort of Wellcome Trust-funded research projects focusing on sexualities and health. The ten Wellcome Trust projects span a diversity of gender and sexual orientations and identities, settings; institutional and non-institutional contexts, lifecourse stages, and explore a range of health-related interventions. As researchers, we originate from a breadth of disciplinary traditions, use a variety of research methods and data sources. Despite this breadth, four common themes are found across the projects:(i) inclusivity, representations and representativeness,(ii) lumping together of diverse groups,(iii) institutions and closed settings (iv) ethical and governance barriers.

This study reports on the operationalisation and testing of the newly developed Relationship Quality (RQ) scale, designed to assess an individual's perception of his or her RQ in their current partnership. Methods: Data were generated through extended sampling from an original UK-based research project, Enduring Love? Couple relationships in the 21st century. This mixed methods study was designed to investigate how couples experience, understand and sustain their long-term relationships. This article utilises the cross-sectional, community sample (N = 8,132) from this combined data set, drawn primarily from the United Kingdom, United States, and Australia. A two-part approach to scale development was employed. An initial 15-item pool was subjected to exploratory factor analysis leading into confirmatory factor analysis using structural equation modeling. Results: The final 9-item scale evidenced convergent construct validity and known-groups validity along with strong reliability. Conclusion: Implications for future research and professional practice are discussed.