Olive Schreiner, Woman and Labor

“Lewis’ Law… States that the comments left on anything about feminism will “justify feminism” which is important and necessary, because women are not equal citizens. And I know about egalitarianism; at its best egalitarianism is another word for feminism, but at its worst it is a diversion responding to fears that by giving women more power… men will have less, which is not the case… Egalitarianism is a Men’s Rights project, Feminism is a Human [Rights] project”

 Online research methodologies may serve as an important mechanism for population-focused data collection in social work research. Online surveys have become increasingly prevalent in research inquiries with young people and have been acknowledged for their potential in investigating understudied and marginalized populations and subpopulations, permitting increased access to communities that tend to be less visible—and thus often less studied—in offline contexts. Lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer (LGBTQ) young people are a socially stigmatized, yet digitally active, youth population whose participation in online surveys has been previously addressed in the literature. Many of the opportunities and challenges of online survey research identified with LGBTQ youths may be highly relevant to other populations of marginalized and hard-to-access young people, who are likely present in significant numbers in the online environment (for example, ethnoracialized youths and low-income youths). In this article, the utility of online survey methods with marginalized young people is discussed, and recommendations for social work research are provided.

I Totally Ship It! 

This online North American study of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer (LGBTQ) social work students (n=1,018) in bachelor of social work (BSW; 24%) or master’s of social work (MSW; 76%) programs explored educational experiences in 126 programs in 44 U. S. states and 7 Canadian provinces. Forty-four percent of students reported limited inclusion of LGBTQ content in classes, yet 64% indicated some degree of support for their LGBTQ identities in their programs. One-third reported homophobic experiences in programs, yet many (63%) were aware of “out” LGBTQ faculty. Overall, students reported fairly low levels of self-assessed practice readiness with specific subpopulations (i.e., gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender), with participants reporting the highest (somewhat prepared) self-assessed readiness with gay populations and the lowest (not well-prepared) self-assessed readiness with transgender populations. Participants suggested lower readiness for their non-LGBTQ colleagues. Implications for social work education are discussed.