Inclusive Research with LGBTIQA+ Groups

This chapter explores the potential of participatory research methodologies for working with LGBTIQA+ individuals and collectives in health and social care. Participatory approaches to health and social care research, policy development, and service design are increasingly used to promote social inclusion and facilitate empowerment, particularly for socially and culturally marginalized groups. The chapter outlines a rationale for why gender and sexuality is a site for transformation in health and social care, before outlining examples of projects that have deployed participatory techniques, including public and patient involvement (PPI), participatory action research (PAR), and codesign. It is argued that participatory approaches have the potential to reveal aspects of LGBTIQA+ lives that are often submerged by stereotypical representations of sexuality and gender and medicalized constructions of vulnerability and risk. Employing participatory principles alongside creative and visual methods can assist in generating new narratives, representations or “co-produced artifacts” that disrupt normative assumptions about LGBTIQA+ lives, improve social inclusion, and have transformative potential for health and social care experiences. Researchers must be sensitive to the limits of particular framings of LGBTIQA+ lives and make available practices and spaces that reveal the complexity of how LGBTIQA+ people enact their identities and navigate their everyday lives. Working with participatory methods will increase the likelihood of developing research that improves health and social care practices and interventions that are appropriate and accessible for LGBTIQA+ people.