B.A. (Hons) Youth and Community Work

I will be undertaking a piece of research for my dissertation as part of a BA (Hons) Youth and Community Degree at the University of Wales, Newport in the United Kingdom.

This research will be looking at the Virtual World/Cyberspace as a platform for trialling out real life experiences.
In particular this piece of research will look at the experience of ‘coming out’ for young people who identify as LGBT+.

With the online virtual world/cyber space becoming embedded into daily society, many people in society have adopted an online persona which is part of their current existing life or a second independent life where one can express a variety of ideas that differ from their real life.

The research undertaken will be used to work with young people who identify as LGBT+ with an aim to help support young people in the future who might be questioning their sexual orientation or gender identity.

This research is being undertaken in two stages. The first consisting of an online survey to get a small estimate on number of young LGBT+ people and how many of them have come out in the offline and online worlds, and those who came out online prior to the offline world.

• This first stage is completely anonymous and consent is automatically granted by yourself as your participate.
• The second stage will be asking for qualitative answers and requires consent by providing your name, address and email address and is limited to the first 25 people.

If you would like to participate in the first stage questionnaire please click here.

The second part of the research is a qualitative element and will ask for more personal answers. These answers will appear in full in the written work and will be published and stored in the University library where members of the public will have free access. Anonymity will be provided for all your answers and you will have the option to choose an Alias/Name for your answers to be included. This element will also be limited to the first 15-25 people.

The research information that is collated from the surveys will form the basis of a dissertation paper.  Information that is quoted will appear in full in the written work and will be published and stored in the University library where members of the public will have free access.

All information provided by participants will be held confidentially and steps will be taken to prevent the anonymity of participants.  Any personal data will be secured digitally for the purposes of this research and will be password protected, in line with the UK Data Protection Act. If you have any questions regarding the safety of your personal data, please use the contact details provided above.

If you would like to participate in the qualitative part of this survey please click here.

Thankyou.

Paul.

If you would like to contact the University regarding this research. please use the details below.

Youth and Community Department
University of Wales, Newport
Caerleon Campus
Lodge Road
Caerlon
Wales, UK
NP13 8QT
01633 432 432