Making the invisible visible: fear and disclosure of sexual orientation at work essay example

Research Methods

Hypothesis
Gays, lesbian, and bisexual (GLB) workers who disclose their sexual orientation get positive and negative reactions and responses from co-workers, which may or may not affect their attitude towards work.

Participants

The participants in this research are the gay, lesbian, and bisexual (GLB) workers who are residing in the US and are working in different sectors.  The age of these participants will be between 20 to 28 years old and are working with different job occupations. Most of the sectors that the researcher will focus on are those who have strict rules in their worksplaces, primarily in the fields of finance, law, law enforcement, government, and the stock market. The researcher wants the participants to consist of an equal number of male and female participants.
The researcher recruits the participants and segregates them according to groups. One group consists of those who are not affected by what people say about their sexual orientation, while the other group is filled with those being affected by the responses. In this regard, the researcher aims to learn more about the disclosure of sexual orientation at work.
Participants will be gathered through the conduct of a national survey and will be asked various questions regarding the topic. 534 legitimate GBL particpants will reveal the postive and negative reactions ensued when they disclosed their sexual orientation to both supportive and non-supportive co-workers. Two groups will be formed in this cluster that will correlate fear and disclosure. Differences will be recorded between the supported GLB workers and the non-supported GLB workers. Once the researcher has gathered all the data, he will choose a target sample, like 100 people, to use for the whole research. It is through this correlations and data research that he will determine whether inequality still exists and if the human rights of the GLB workers are still violated at work.
If possible, the researcher also wants to gather workers from various companies and businesses to know how people from various sectors will react when GLB members disclose their sexual orientations. The major purpose of this study is to determine how GLB workers are affected by the reactions of supportive and non-supportive coworkers when they reveal their sexual orientation and to see if these affect their lives and how they work.

Measures

There are two measures used in this study, which are the independent variable and the dependent variable. The independent variable for this study is the GLB workers disclosing their sexual orientation at work and the dependent variable is whether they will be affected by their co-workers’ reaction or not. Through the participants, we will try to determine if the dependent variable is indeed the true output of what the independent variable has done.

Independent Variable: GLB Workers Discloses Their Sexual Orientation At Work

Unknown to many people, GLB workers are among the minority group in the workplace despite the workforce becoming more diverse in terms of gender, ethinicity, and religion—and of course, sexual orientation. The last one is considered the “ last acceptable and remaining prejudice” in modrn societies compared to other diversities. This is why, even at present, they face a variety of challenges such as being forced to remain in the closet, being discriminated, or being dismissed from their job (Ozeren, 2013).
For those who are not aware, homosexuality is considered a social stigma as it is considered a blemish on an individual’s character (Ragins, Singh & Cornwell, 2007). This is because there are misunderstandings about it in the society. As a result, gay, lesbian, and bisexual (GLB) employees may fear disclosing their sexual diversity, especially since this could lead to physical violence and considerable marginalization and stigmatization within the workplace (Barett & Lewis, 2012). Here in the United States, while some are open-minded and liberated, there are still those who are narrow-minded and, at the same time, very homophobic. Whether it is because they are insecure, afraid, or just plain angry, these homophobes treat GLB workers badly—especially when they find out what their real sexual orientations are. Most of the time, the homophobe would feel threathened of the GLB workers that they would start discriminating them and soon, they would treat them badly. This is just one of the reasons why GLB workers are thinking twice about disclosing their sexual orientations at work. In this regard, this is something that should be addressed at present.
Only a few researchers and scholars have addressed this issue and this is the reason why this study was created in the first place. The independent variable explains whether GLB workers should reveal their sexual orientation in the workplace or not.

Dependent Variable: The Effect of Disclosing Sexual Orientation at Work from GLB Workers

When GLB workers reveal their sexual orientations in the workplace, it is no surprise that they will face challenges that could possibly have an effect in their lives. A workplace should make employees feel good and encourage them to develop themselves regardless of the many personal attributes that make them different and despite having a diverse management. In fact, this kind of principle is considered to be helpful and valuable in the achievement of company goals (Hoye, Lievens, 2003).
Despite that, there are still times when workers get negative responses or effects from their co workers when they reveal their sexual orientation. In light of diversity management, it is indeed necessary to understand the specific work-related experiences and discrimination encountered by gay, lesbian, and bisexual people (Hoye & Lievens, 2003). By using the research method or design that the esearcher selected, he will be able to determine if this dependable variable is, indeed, the real output of the independent variable mentioned above. After knowing the output, the reseacher will find out if this is how our world works and if there is something that we can do about it.

Procedure

For this study, the research design that the researcher chooses is the Causal Design. This enables the determination of the extent and nature of cause-and-effect relationships. Here, expereriments are conducted as a way of collecting data and determining if there are changes in processes, existing norms, and others (Causal Research, n. d.).
One of the advantages of this design is that it is associated with greater levels of internal validity, thanks to the systematic selection of subjects. It is here that we are told that an effect is caused by something and go deeper into that and ask why that effect happens. Taking the form of “ If X, then Y”, this method is used to “ measure the impact a specific change will have on existing norms and assumptions. It occurs when variation in one phenomenon, an independent variable, leads to or results, on average, in variation in another phenomenon, the dependent variable” (USC Libraries, n. d).
While there are just the independent and dependent variables, we considered many factors as well to help complete this research paper.

Between-or Within-subjects Design

For this design, the participants will be exposed to surveys and interviews from researchers as well as to group experiments about their situations. Our group will present them with various questions related to the topic, which will reveal details that could be helpful to the researcher’s study. We are hopeful that our participants will be honest and give us as much detail as they can about their situations.
According to libguides, it is here that we see the empirical association. It is where we get a valid conclusion based on finding an association between the independent variable and the dependent variable. Through the interviews and surveys that we conduct, the researcher hopes to find out how much the positive and negative responses of co workers affect their lives and the way they work.

Between-Subjects Design

If researchers want to be a litte more accurate and reduce the chances of differences between the groups having an effect, modifications such as random assignment and matching strategy happens. As such, this will be conducted to achieve better results (Shuttleworth, n. d).
The groups are created by looking at what could be the GLB workers’ situation when they get the positive or negative responses. We think it is best to try a matching strategy where matched pairs are done. The pair will contain one GLB worker who reacts positively to a negative response from a co-worker and a GLB worker who reacts negatively to a negative response. This way, the researcher can obtain different results that can help in making this study more valid and accurate.

References

Barett, N. & Lewis, J. (2012). Consequences of disclosure of sexual orientation in the workplace.
New Zealand Journal of Human Resources Management, 12(3), 96-104.
Causal research. (n. d.). Retrieved from http://research-methodology. net/research-
methodology/research-design/conclusive-research/causal-research/>
Hoye, G. & Lievens, F. (2003). The effects of sexual orientation on hirability ratings: An experimental study. Journal of Business and Psychology, 18(1), 15-30. Retrieved from http://users. ugent. be/~flievens/orientation. pdf
Ozeren, E. (2013). Sexual orientation discrimination in the workplace: A systematic review of literature. Procedia, Social and Behavioral Sciences.
Ragins, R., Singh, R. & Cornwell, J. M. (2007). Making the invisible visible: Fear and disclosure
of sexual orientation at work. Journal of Applied Psychology, 92, 1103-1118.
Shuttleworth, M. (n. d.). Between subjects design. Retrieved from
https://explorable. com/between-subjects-design
USC Libraries. (n. d.). Causal Design. Retrieved from
http://libguides. usc. edu/content. php? pid= 83009&sid= 818072