An Application of Consensual Qualitative Research to the Study of Sexual Violence within the Queer Community: Strengths, Challenges, and Lessons Learned

Background: This presentation offers a description and application of a relatively recent addition to qualitative methods identified as consensual qualitative research (CQR). Our team applied CQR to the study of sexual violence within the Queer community, over a course of more than three years. It is a rigorous form of analysis requiring a research team to reach consensus on domains, core ideas, categories and subcategories; during this process, an outside auditor iteratively reviews the work of the team, intending to identify key ideas with as much precision and clarity as possible. This analytic method has been applied across many disciplines and fields including social work, counseling, counselor education, psychology, vocational rehabilitation, and gender studies. However, rarely does there appear to be much interprofessional research using CQR, and no studies on sexual violence within the Queer community were found to apply this approach from any discipline.

Methods: Our research group that applied CQR, including the auditor, included a social work professor, a political scientist, a sociologist, a criminologist, and a psychologist. Through this interprofessional lens, we were able to inform and educate each other with knowledge from our core disciplines, improving upon our own understandings of sexual violence within the Queer community. This involved interviewing 22 research participants for approximately an hour, transcribing the interviews, and applying the CQR process to develop domains, core ideas, categories and subcategories.  

Results: Briefly, we found that sexual violence within the Queer community is quite prevalent and in need of further study. Members of the Queer community typically address sexual assault experiences informally through censure of offending persons due to a lack of understanding/biases of many first responders. Different members of the Community require different resources and responses to sexual assault. While some regions of the country have a high number of useful resources, others do not, and they have not been successfully marketed to the Queer community.

Conclusions and Implications: Many additional, new, and innovative resources are necessary to ensure the safety of the Queer community, but little can be done until more general acceptance and understanding about those who identify as Queer has developed among first responders. CQR offered a highly rigorous method to identify findings pertaining to a complex topic.

We will provide highlights from the study in brief. Participants will also learn the basics about applying the CQR method to their own research and will be offered references for further investigation of the approach. We will also explain its relationship to grounded theory to show its similarities, and also where CQR departs from it: specifically, its philosophical backdrop, purpose, coding process, and team structure. The rigorous approach to qualitative analysis is appealing  because its highly structured form allows for greater confidence in findings, unlike many other qualitative methods.  Finally, one presenter will explain personal lessons learned during the analytic process from the perspective of an experienced qualitative researcher, including its relative strengths and weaknesses compared to other approaches, and recommendations to those considering applying the approach to their  own studies.