Reflective report: A qualitative exploration of whether lesbian and bisexual women are ‘protected’ from sociocultural pressure to be thin

Huxley, Caroline; Clarke, Victoria; Halliwell, Emma

Abstract

This reflective report provides another appearance-related example of a thematic analysis study. Whereas the worked example in Chapter 6 focused on gay men’s appearance and provided a predominantly latent-level interpretation of the data, this report focuses on lesbian and bisexual women’s appearance and provides a more semantic-level interpretation. The study reported here comes from Caroline Huxley’s mixed methods PhD research, which was supervised by Victoria Clarke (a sexuality researcher) and Emma Halliwell (a body image researcher) (see Clarke et al., 2012; Huxley, 2013; Huxley and Hayfield, 2012; Huxley et al., 2011). Because thematic analysis is theoretically flexible, it is ideally suited to mixed methods research which often draws upon different epistemological frameworks. In the reflective boxes in the text, Caroline reflects on her experiences of conducting the study and identifies good practice in reporting a thematic analytic study and qualitative research more generally.

Citation

Huxley, C., Clarke, V., & Halliwell, E. (2016). Reflective report: A qualitative exploration of whether lesbian and bisexual women are ‘protected’ from sociocultural pressure to be thin. In E. Lyons, & A. Coyle (Eds.), Analysing Qualitative Data in Psychology. (Second). London: SAGE Publications

• Acceptance Date: Sep 1, 2016
• Online Publication Date: Sep 19, 2019
• Publication Date: Sep 1, 2016
• Deposit Date: Sep 19, 2019
• Publisher: SAGE Publications
• Edition: Second
• Book Title: Analysing Qualitative Data in Psychology
• ISBN: 9781446273753
• Public URL: https://uwe-repository.worktribe.com/output/3123642
• Publisher URL: https://uk.sagepub.com/en-gb/eur/analysing-qualitative-data-in-psychology/book241179