Using Queer Framings and Positionalities to Unsettle Statistical Assumptions of Generalizability and Representativeness

Abstract

This paper aims to unsettle assumptions of generalizability and representativeness in quantitative research using queer framings and positionalities. We argue that generalizability and representativeness are tools of supremacist dominance that reinforce harmful and essentialist categories of identities for the false purpose of statistical ‘rigor’ and create more harm than benefit for queer and trans students. For many scholars, quantitative methods are antithetical to justice-centered scholarship given their historical entrenchment and current complicity in oppression and maintaining racial superiority and social dominance. With these problems firmly in mind, we draw on queer, critical, and poststructural frameworks to resist generalizability within quantitative methods. Building on these frameworks, we then present recommendations for how quantitative methods can be both queer and rigorous, thinking beyond generalizability to imagine liberatory practices for education research.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).