Despite much of the fear and ambiguity over the use of the term queer in professional and academic settings, we recommend researchers include the language and the population in the study of sexual identity. During our own recent research endeavors, where we both recruited and focused on Queer participants, we learned some important lessons. Based on these experiences we explore the existing methodological literature about accessing and including Queer participants, provide an overview of two studies that both invited Queer participation and examined the population’s experience, discuss the benefits and challenges of incorporating people who identify as Queer, and finally present recommendations for future research.
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