The Study
A study was conducted on middle aged men and women who identified as either Gay or Lesbian. The test asked a few different key questions about their past, and then the answers were evaluated and
How technology may be helping or hurting the LGBTQ community!
Bradley J. Bond Æ Veronica Hefner Æ Kristin L. Drogos – Springer Science+Business Media, LLC 2008.
This study was to discover the information seeking process of the LGBTQ community when finding their sexuality, and how big of a part current technology has played in that process. The main questions in the study consisted of, 1. How much media was used in the coming out process, 2. Information seeking practices, 3. Family openness, 4. Lonliness, 5. self esteem.
Both men and women identifying as either gay or lesbian sexuality, were involved in this test. The first hypothesis was stated that, “Participants would report using media more than face-to-face interpersonal relationships as a means to gather information during the coming-out process.” The second hypothesis was, “Claiming that participants will report using the Internet more than other forms of mass media as a research tool during the coming out process.” The third hypothesis predicted that younger participants would be more likely to claim use of the Internet as an information-gathering tool than would older participants, and the fourth hypothesis examined the tone participants used to describe their information-seeking experiences with regards to specific media. All four hypothesis were supported in this test using a Chi-Square.
This study showed us how family, television, the internet, and magazines were used in the coming out process of these individuals. It found that ‘family’ and ‘internet’, drew the strongest support from our research.
This study showed how the affect of not only mass media, but also family, can have on a young individual who is going through a possible change from the norm, in their sexuality.
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