A healthier way to meet…
We had a simple idea: to explore the experiences of members of GFR. This is the story of how that idea became a journey lasting over two years, culminating in an original piece of research being published in a peer-reviewed journal.
For those of you who don't know me, my name is David Hunter. I've been a member of GFR for over 7 years. I've previously served on the committee as the ordinary member, communication officer and welfare officer. After a year out, I've just been appointed back to the committee as your Inclusivity Captain. A couple of years ago, I wrote a blog about my running experience (you can read by clicking here). In a way, writing that blog at the start of 2018 is what started this process.
“... this research is important. We identified that there is an overall lack of research around LGBTQIA+ participation in sport. Now we know more about the benefits peer supported exercise can have for members of our community.”
Reflecting on my previous experience, I realised that other new members may have shared a similar journey. Different motivations for coming to GFR, different previous relationships with exercise, the initial contact with GFR and the associated feelings of anxiety when coming to the Arc for the first time and then a personal journey of their time at the club. But for me, there was more to it. As a Registered Nurse, I follow the requirements of the Nursing & Midwifery Council's Code. Part of these standards include: treating people as individuals and without discrimination, recognising diversity and also practising in line with the best available evidence. As an academic, the part of the Code about best available evidence got me thinking. What do we actually know about the experience of LGBTQIA+ people exercising with a peer group? The benefits of exercise in general are well documented, but does this relate to those who identify as LGBTQIA+? As we discovered, the answer is that we knew very little. There was practically no published research which considered this, and certainly not much from a Scottish perspective. There were some reports such as the Stonewall LGBT in Britain health report (2018) and the Equality Network Scotland LGBT sports charter: guidance document (2015), but not much in the way of academic research. So, I thought, let's get some. At the time, Kevin Boyle - a founding member of GFR, was one of my students. I asked Kevin if he'd like to help on this project and he agreed.
David (L) and Kevin (R) at GFR
“Our main finding was the idea that exercising, in our case running, with peers represented a 'healthier way to meet people'. “
I'm going to skip some of the boring bits. However, research requires approval by a university ethics committee (since the Nazis experimented on prisoners during WW2). We applied and received this from the University of the West of Scotland (where, at the time, I worked and Kevin was a student) in June 2018. Due to me changing jobs, not much more happened until the start of 2019. Then, early that year, we got the ball rolling. GFR shared details of our plan to recruit participants for the study in our email communications, on social media, at club announcements before runs at the Arc and by Kevin and I sharing a participant information sheet and standing around chatting to members about it. Our aim was to recruit 15 folk to take part. We wanted as much variety as we could achieve in our participants. Different ages, gender identities, running abilities, ethnic backgrounds etc. We successfully started recruiting willing participants and starting our data collection via face-to-face interviews, which were audio recorded to be transcribed later.
Interviews took us up to late spring 2019. We were then faced with the mammoth task of transcribing the interviews. Twelve short interviews may not seem like much, but that's a lot of data: 29,317 words to be precise. It took until autumn 2019 to have all the transcribing completed (remember, I was working full time and Kevin was a full-time student nurse during our research). With our data transcribed, we could make a start on analysis. The point here is to identify the themes of the research. What did our participants say that we could group together in a way that would make sense and help us build an understanding of their experience. After various chats, exploring the content of the transcripts, we identified our findings:
Our main finding was the idea that exercising, in our case running, with peers represented a 'healthier way to meet people'. The idea that running with other LGBTQIA+ people benefited physical, mental and social health was clear from the findings of the research. Our research captured something which may seem obvious, that running with GFR is much more than just getting physically fitter. Sure, that's an important part and our participants reported that they had indeed improved their physical fitness levels but, people come to our club for so much more. For one thing, supporting their mental health and, interconnected to that, their social health/wellbeing. The social interactions the club provided were a driving force for many of our participants when thinking about why they joined the club. This included people looking for romantic interactions away from meeting people, either in the gay scene or on dating apps. The wider issues of representation and feeling like you belong to something were also highlighted as being important factors of being a member of GFR. Kevin was able to share the findings of our research at the AGM/Review of the Year in October 2019.
You may be asking yourself, so what? Well, this research is important. We identified that there is an overall lack of research around LGBTQIA+ participation in sport. Now we know more about the benefits peer supported exercise can have for members of our community. We have scientific evidence to support what we always felt we knew - that exercising with a peer group had multiple benefits. That evidence has now been published in the British Journal of Nursing, where we recommend to the readers (mainly nurses and other health care professionals) that they should be signposting peer supported exercise to any LGBTQIA+ patients they encounter.
Unfortunately, we can't email the full article to everyone. If you have access to academic databases via a college, university or work account (e.g. Athens for NHS staff), here is the full reference to find the article:
Hunter, D. J. and Boyle, K. (2020) A healthier way to meet people: the experiences of LGBT people exercising with a peer group. British Journal of Nursing, 29(18), pp. 1068-1073. (doi: 10.12968/bjon.2020.29.18.1068)
Completing this piece of research was a real labour of love. The first academic journal we submitted to offered to publish a short summary piece rather than a full article. Kevin and I persevered because we believed in what we had done. I'm very proud of what we achieved. This would not have been possible without the support of GFR and the members who gave their free time to take part, so a massive 'thank you' to all involved.
Dr. David Hunter is a Lecturer in Nursing & Health Care at the University of Glasgow.
January 2021