A Qualitative Approach to the Intersection of Sexual, Ethnic, and Gender Identities

A qualitative strategy that allows researchers to study how people craft their identities over time, through recurring and sometimes conflicted negotiations with institutional settings such as those of the church, family, and work is reported on.

Abstract

In this paper we report on a new qualitative instrument designed to study the intersection of identities related to sexuality and race/ethnicity, and how people who hold those identities interact with social contexts. Researchers often resort to using separate measures to assess race/ethnicity, sexual orientation, and other target identities. But this approach can miss elements of a self-system that stem from the intersection of identities, the interactions between identities and social contexts, related shifts in identity over time, and related changes in the prominence and valence of identities. Using a small sub-sample, we demonstrate how our instrument can help researchers overcome these limitations. Our instrument was also designed for economy in administration and analysis, so that it could be used as a qualitative complement in large survey research.