Let Our Stories Be Told: Conducting Narrative Inquiry with Trans Youth

ABSTRACT

Today’s trans youth are being spoken at and/or for, while adults and legislators are debating and deciding how they must live their day-to-day existence. However, to best understand today’s trans youth, counselor scholars and practitioners need to hear directly from trans youth. This article provides a foundational understanding of why conducting narrative inquiry with trans youth is ethical, affirming, and a best practice. Additionally, it provides a base of understanding of what narrative inquiry’s purpose and intention is, as well as considerations for creating a rigorous, trustworthy, and credible narrative inquiry. Finally, the author addresses research biases that may exist within the process of narrative inquiry that are necessary to evaluate. Additionally, there is an increased risk to safety with minor participants who identify as transgender. There are biases within research regarding gender identity development; therefore, using a case example, the author attempts to address these concerns as elements to address throughout the entire research cycle, specifically with narrative inquiry with trans children and adolescents.

KEYWORDS:

• Narrative inquiry
• trans youth
• ethical research
• qualitative research
• marginalized voices

Disclosure statement

Michelle E. Wade, Ed.D. is disclosing a conflict of interest with Dr. Christopher T. Belser as a colleague at The University of New Orleans.

Citation diversity statement

Research points to a bias within published works to not have solid representation of marginalized voices cited throughout the piece (Dworkin et al., 2020; Zurn et al., 2020). The author of this article is committed to promoting diversity in thought and representation within their scholarship. Therefore, the author made a concentrated effort to utilize references which were representative of fair author inclusion, specifically highlighting women authors. The citations chosen were done so because they represented scholarly pursuits within the realm of narrative inquiry. We want to honor that knowledge base and therefore gave credit to those within these realms who contribute to that knowledge base.