What Makes an Ally? Experiences and Perceptions of LGBTQ+ Allies on a University Campus

Ben Silverberg, Bryan Silverberg, Garrett Shingler*, Angel Montanez, Wei Fang, and Kimberly Quedado

Department of Emergency Medicine, Division of Ambulatory Services, WVU School of Medicine, Morgantown WV 26505

Presentation Category: Behavioral & Social Sciences (Poster Presentation #86)

Student’s Major: Exercise Physiology

Although research has been conducted about how LGBTQ+ individuals feel while on campus, there has not been extensive research on how this applies to LGBTQ+ allies. The research we began was to view how individuals came to be allies to the community and how inclusive they felt West Virginia University’s campus was to LGBTQ+ youth as well as allies. We first reviewed previous literature poised towards LGBTQ+ and drew themes from these, then adapted them to apply to allies. This included region of high school attended, religious background, political ideology, sexual orientation, and gender identity. We used this data to draw inferences between how participants answered these questions. After compiling these questions, we created a survey and then coded it into Qualtrics, a web-based service that allows surveys to be distributed and issued via WVU’s email service to reach all of the student body. We then reviewed the results of the 300+ responses. This research sought to draw possible conclusions between how participants answered questions about themselves and the presence or absence of LGBQ and T allyship. Significant associations were able to be drawn between LGBQ allyship and T allyship with political views, parents’ religion, whether they had faced discrimination or not, and whether they had to conceal their allyship. We plan on doing further analyses on how ally and non-ally’s experiences compare when exploring: LGBTQ friends/family now and before; religion - both their own and their parents'; and politics - both their own and their parents'.

Funding:

Program/mechanism supporting research/creative efforts: WVU's Research Apprenticeship Program (RAP) & accompanying HONR 297-level course