Serious Legal Problems faced by Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Other Sexual-Minority People in Western Canada: A Qualitative Study

Methodology

This work is grounded in community-based research principles to ensure that all aspects of the project are led by sexual-minority community members for the benefit of communities from the outset. Community-based research involves community members in all aspects of the research process—from formulating research questions to sharing research findings—to ensure research conducted benefits and empowers communities first and foremostFootnote 62. All research team members were peers in terms of their sexual orientation. Given CBRC’s stronger connections to queer men’s communities, additional research team members who were queer women were intentionally sought out to help lead and implement this work, which resulted in four queer women joining the team as peer researchers.

The project commenced with consultations with community members across Canada to refine the interview guide and recruitment process. This included consultation with individuals who were identified as key informants by the research team and who possess expertise on the legal problems faced by sexual-minority people in Canada, including members of provincial and civil liberties organizations, legal scholars, and organizations that provide legal support to sexual-minority communities. Most of these key informants also identified as members of sexual-minority communities. Special attention was given to consulting with communities of all genders and sexual orientations to ensure that their voices were reflected in the study. The study was approved by the Human Research Ethics Boards at the University of Victoria, University of British Columbia, and Simon Fraser University (protocol #H20-00538).

Recruitment was conducted through social media ads posted by CBRC and other sexual-minority community organizations, and through legal aid societies (Appendix A). Individuals who clicked on ads were sent to a page on the CBRC website with additional information about the study (Appendix B), including information about the study team, research questions, risks and benefits, and funding source. Individuals were then directed to an online recruitment screener (Appendix B) to determine eligibility and to identify who to interview. To be eligible, participants had to identify as lesbian, gay, or bisexual, or as another non-heterosexual identity (e.g., Two-Spirit, queer); have experienced a serious legal problem in the last three years; live in British Columbia, Alberta, Saskatchewan, or Manitoba; be 16 years of age or older; and be able to complete an interview in either French or English. The definition of legal problems used for this study was broad and informed by the Canadian Legal Problems Survey. This included legal problems associated with financial issues, employment, property damage, immigration, policing, divorce and child custody, medical treatment, discrimination, and harassment. Participants did not have to report engagement in legal action to be eligible. All participants who completed the screener were provided with a list of sexual-minority-friendly mental health resources, regardless of their eligibility or whether they were selected for an interview.

Participants were selected to reflect a diversity of sociodemographic characteristics and a range of legal challenges faced (purposive sampling). Research participants were given information about the study, along with a brief description of interviewers on the research team and were informed that they could choose which peer researcher they wished to speak with. Participants were able to bring a support person of their choosing to their interview, if desired. Support persons were required to sign a confidentiality agreement to ensure that the information shared in the interview was not communicated outside of the interview context.

Interviews took place over the phone or using Zoom and were conducted by peer researchers. Participants received a copy of the consent form (Appendix C) prior to the interview. Before commencing the interview, the interviewer reviewed the consent form and participants provided verbal consent to proceed. Interviews were semi-structuredFootnote 60 and focused on exploring participants’ legal problems, how they attempted to resolve these issues, the outcome of these attempts, and the barriers they encountered (see Appendix D for full interview guide). Interviews ranged in length from 30 to 100 minutes. Participants were given an honorarium of $50 CAD for their time.

Interviews were audio-recorded and transcribed verbatim, and transcripts were stripped of identifiers (e.g., names, dates, locations, details of legal proceedings) prior to analysis. Participants were given the opportunity to review their transcript. Study data were stored on secure, encrypted University of Victoria servers. Transcripts were thematically analyzedFootnote 61 for dominant themes related to serious legal problems and issues of access to justice. The analysis process was led by peer researchers. First, the research team open-coded four transcripts and met to discuss emergent themes. Based on team consensus, a codebook was produced that was applied to the remaining transcripts. Finally, the team met to discuss the findings, and this write-up is the final analytic step of our thematic analysis. Participant quotes are provided with no demographic identifiers in order to help protect participant confidentiality.