Introduction
The study of the experience of testing injuries, ailments, and diseases in psychological and physical aspects among LGBTQ+ representatives and employees in the military field is a relevant topic in medicine. The nature of military trauma is understood as the severity of military trauma as the intensity of combat experience, the presence and severity of an injury, as well as the nature of local war. Accordingly, the latter includes both factors of a combat situation and differences in an existential situation of veterans of some wars. Today, healthcare professionals face the problem of operating with insufficient knowledge about the impact of military injuries on veterans and military personnel who belong to minorities and how to help these people effectively. This moment is the least studied by professionals, although the problem of discrimination and intimidation of people based on sexual orientation still remains one of the most common and unresolved; such unfavorable circumstances can be observed outside military service (Gurung et al., 2018). This paper reviews the essential elements of future research in the context of ethical considerations.
Problem, Purpose, and Research Questions
The problem of this study should be defined as a question regarding the impact of military trauma on LGBTQ+ service members and veterans that requires increased attention, as well as a gap in existing knowledge that indicates the need for further understanding and analysis of the topic. It is no secret that such members of minorities often face difficulties of both a physical and psychological nature, and nevertheless, recommendations on the conceptualization of cases and treatment remain limited to this day (Livingston et al., 2019). The primary purpose of this investigation is to determine the degree of influence of trauma on LGBTQ+ representatives from the military sphere. Why, how, in what way, and to what extent is the effect of military trauma observed on LGBTQ+ service members and veterans? These are key questions to be answered in detail in this study.
Data-Collection Strategies
Interviews and surveys are the strategies that the author will rely on when conducting research and answering questions. Thus, an interview is a face-to-face contact between a researcher with a respondent (Jain, 2021). In contrast, a survey, in this vein, is a method of collecting information about an object of research through communication in the form of a questionnaire between a researcher and an interviewee (Jain, 2021). Among the factors explaining the choice in favor of one of the strategies should be attributed to the accuracy of details and ease of interpretation of results. Adequacy to an object, subject, general research objectives, accumulated material, compliance with modern principles of scientific research, prognosis (scientific validity that the chosen method will give new and reliable results), compliance with the logical stage of research, and complex relationship with other methods are among the few factors that should be relied on. In brief, in this case, the main guideline for selecting a research strategy should be its objectives. The tasks and questions set before the work determine the ways to resolve them and, therefore, the choice of appropriate methods.
The Target Group and Other Groups
Adult male and female military personnel with military trauma belonging to LGBTQ+ minorities are the target group of this study. A competent and correct approach to communication, interaction, and obtaining the necessary knowledge are ethical issues associated with collecting data from the group. Emphasis should be placed on minimizing and eliminating what can cause physical and emotional harm to people and questions that would be uncomfortable for respondents to answer. The need to study these people and their characteristics, including their dynamics, is dictated by practical psychology since a war leaves an imprint on the entire subsequent life of a person. There is no need to explore other groups but only focus on the one indicated earlier. The author prioritizes adults from the category of minorities who continue to serve in the military or are former military.
Gaining Access and Permission
Access to this group is likely to be obtained through the permission of medical specialists and the patients themselves. In general, conflicts of interest may be related to individual characteristics, opinions, and visions of the situation. The author plans to provide participants with compensation calculated according to specific formulas. This initiative is from the point of view of ethical issues and encourages the development of respondents’ interest in research, assistance, and further active participation, including for the time spent.
Possible Ethical Issues
People find themselves in the field of ethics when they evaluate the results of any activity in terms of their benefit or harm to society and specific people whose interests are somehow affected. By providing compensation to study participants, there is a considerable probability of encountering ethical issues, which are associated mainly with the proportionality of remuneration and the degree of transparency of negotiations. According to Resnik (2019), underpayment or overpayment, exploitation, and non-fulfillment of all orders are among the few aspects that cause the most concern since people need special protection from money’s influence. For example, if research subjects are paid too little, the public may be suspicious of a particular study (Resnik, 2019). In this case, the researcher should take care of compensation for personal expenses and time to avoid exploiting participants. Furthermore, encouraging participation to achieve recruitment and retention goals is one of the most acceptable solutions. Nonetheless, one should highlight that payments during clinical trials have been raising ethical concerns for many years. These situations are related to the fact that compensations may force or persuade one to partake in clinical trials; this discussion continues to this day.
Ensuring Confidentiality
Generally, one should ensure confidentiality by using several best practices to protect data in the study. Firstly, before starting information gathering, it is recommended to focus on describing the data management processes, developing a data collection plan to preserve the confidentiality of participants, and preparing informed consent, which allows research subjects to make an informed decision about participation. Secondly, during and after data collection, the researcher should ensure the anonymity of participants, sharing files securely with those who need them and, accordingly, deleting unnecessary details. The application of these methods should be manageable, fitting seamlessly into the five steps of a user research process: developing a research plan, selecting participants, conducting research, synthesizing, and sharing data. Thus, the introduction of these practices and the search for their practical application allows one to spend more time researching and scaling information safely and reliably. Accordingly, strategies to minimize and eliminate potential coercion problems are based on appealing to ethical principles. In particular, sufficient time should be allocated to thoroughly explain the research’s essence while giving prospective participants freedom of choice, action, and opinion to decide on participation.
Other Potential Data Collection Methods
The study of medical records, documents, and reports, as well as the analysis of reliable articles from verified Internet sources, are potential methods of obtaining the information necessary for research. As practice shows, these methods are one of the most effective and efficient in terms of avoiding ethical problems, difficulties, and issues. Hence, in many cases, a complete understanding of the content of the found texts permits one to obtain sufficient data to answer questions and deepen the thematic analysis. Each method has advantages and disadvantages, allowing or not allowing one to get the essential details. Consequently, there is a risk of getting inaccurate and unreliable information. For example, such a method as the study of medical records sometimes gives incorrect and biased answers since there are many errors and inaccuracies when filling in patient data (Weiner et al., 2020). Moreover, no one has canceled such a moment as the human factor in this case. Based on this, the potential methods presented earlier are suitable in the ethical moment, but in practical terms, they are in some sense inferior to surveys and interviews.
Conclusion
Summarizing the above, it is necessary to state that the impact of military trauma on adult men and women of LGBTQ+ representatives is a relevant and little-studied topic that requires attention. A full-fledged study devoted to this problem will focus on this group and the collection of data obtained through interviews, surveys, or the study of documentation. It is assumed that the researcher will be able to avoid potential ethical issues and difficulties by following the principles of “do no harm” when communicating with respondents. The obtained results will be able to fill the existing gaps in research and will become support for future scientific works.
References
Gurung, S., Ventuneac, A., Rendina, H. J., Savarese, E., Grov, C., & Parsons, J. T. (2018). Prevalence of military sexual trauma and sexual orientation discrimination among lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender military personnel: A descriptive study. Sexuality Research and Social Policy, 15(1), 74-82. Web.
Jain, N. (2021). Survey versus interviews: Comparing data collection tools for exploratory research. The Qualitative Report, 26(2), 541-554. Web.
Livingston, N. A., Berke, D. S., Ruben, M. A., Matza, A. R., & Shipherd, J. C. (2019). Experiences of trauma, discrimination, microaggressions, and minority stress among trauma-exposed LGBT veterans: Unexpected findings and unresolved service gaps. Psychological Trauma: Theory, Research, Practice, and Policy, 11(7), 695. Web.
Resnik, D. B. (2019). Are payments to human research subjects ethically suspect? Journal of Clinical Research Best Practices, 15(6), 2374. Web.
Weiner, S. J., Wang, S., Kelly, B., Sharma, G., & Schwartz, A. (2020). How accurate is the medical record? A comparison of the physician’s note with a concealed audio recording in unannounced standardized patient encounters. Journal of the American Medical Informatics Association, 27(5), 770-775. Web.