Creating Deaf-Friendly Spaces for Research: Innovating Online Qualitative Enquiries

Abstract

In this article, we provide a reflexive account of the first author’s experience of designing and using an inclusive online forum to conduct research with people living in Australia with deafness or hearing loss. We reflect on the personal, institutional, pragmatic, and ontological influences on the project and how we managed these influences when they conflicted. In recounting this experience, we highlight the productive and restrictive aspects of doing research with deaf Australians in a university context and online. In addition to being a financially and time-effective method, the use of an online forum facilitated the recruitment of a geographically diverse sample of participants and enabled us to accommodate a range of linguistic preferences. However, as English is the dominant language in a Western context, analysing and publishing visual spatial languages in academia remains problematic, particularly in relation to the availability of expertise and issues regarding protecting anonymity.

Keywords:

• deafness
• forum
• online qualitative enquiry
• reflexive
• visual language

Notes

1. We recognise the diverse terminology used to discuss living with a hearing loss or deafness and the implications of the various terms. In this context, we use the term “deafness” to encompass all types of deafness and hearing loss, including people who use sign language as their first language to simplify complex issues around deaf identity.

2. Aural approaches to communication promote the use of residual hearing and hearing technology to develop lip reading skills and spoken language comparatively manual approaches encourage the use of sign language (Eleweke & Rodda 2000).

3. We would like to clarify that 119 people completed the survey and 24 people contributed to the forum data (either online or via hard copy). However, in this paper we only discuss the survey/forum respondents who participated online.

4. Deaf culture, sometimes referred to as the deaf community, is similar to an ethnic minority. It is a network of people who share a language (e.g., Auslan), a history of common experiences, customs, values, and beliefs (Deaf Australia 2013b).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Danielle Ferndale

Danielle Ferndale is a PhD student in Psychology at The University of Queensland. Her work focuses in the area of critical health psychology and her main interests are deafness and hearing loss, qualitative methods, and communication.

Bernadette Watson

Bernadette Watson (PhD Queensland) is a senior lecturer in psychology at The University of Queensland. She is a health psychologist who studies communication. She researches the influence of identity and intergroup processes both on patient-health professional communication and on communication in multidisciplinary health teams.

Louise Munro

Louise Munro is a lecturer and unit coordinator in the Master of Counselling at Queensland University of Technology. In addition to private practice in counselling and supervision, Louise has held professional positions in both community and corporate sectors and was the national convenor for the APS Psychology and Deafness Interest Group from 2009 to 2013.