Thu 24 Nov 2016 In: Our Communities View at Wayback View at NDHA
Hohou Te Rongo Kahukura – Outing Violence released a report earlier this year, based on 18 community hui and a survey for people identifying under the Rainbow umbrella about experiences in relationships, sexual encounters, and help-seeking around partner and sexual violence. The survey was answered by 407 people over the age of 16 who identified themselves by age, intersex status, gender identity, sexuality, ethnicity and disability. Responses came from all ethnicities, genders and sexualities in the Rainbow community in Aotearoa New Zealand and showed that the more traditional labels do not fit very well anymore – the LGBTI communities are very diverse. Since releasing the report, Hohou Te Rongo Kahukura – Outing Violence has been asked whether they could provide specific groups within the LGBTI communities with more targeted information from our survey results, to help different groups understand and plan responses to partner and sexual violence. As a result, they are now offering the opportunity for different LGBTI community members to contact them with requests for how they would like to see the research results further analysed so the organisation can seek resourcing to try and meet these requests. “When we put the survey out, we promised that we would treat information shared with us as taonga. In our small communities, we recognise the importance of confidentiality and anonymity, particularly about such difficult topics. We told those answering that we would only release information with other people’s answers as a group, so no one could be identified. “We also promised that the raw information would only be accessed by the researcher named, Sandra Dickson. We shared a bit about her research experience in gendered violence so people could make an informed decision about whether they were happy to take part.” Members of the LGBTI communities can now make a request for information, which could be anything from analysing the research for all trans and gender diverse respondents, or for all Māori respondents, to all male respondents, or for all people below the age of 25. There are a number of limitations anyone seeking information should be aware of. “We have sought advice from researchers at University of Auckland around the minimum size of a ‘group’ within the data we can analyze. While there is no hard and fast answer, we will need to review the numbers of any subsections requested. For example, ‘people under 25 who identify as Pacifica and bisexual’ would not be able to be analyzed, as a) this subgroup of people could be easily identified in our communities, and b) being such a small population would not yield statistically significant results. “We can also not provide anything that we didn’t ask in the survey. We may not be able to provide answers to every question that was asked in the survey, depending on rates of answers for smaller groups. This will be decided on a case-by-case basis. If we are concerned that releasing something may identify anyone, we will choose safety and confidentiality first.” After we have confirmed requests the organisation will seek funding to do further analysis. “The original analysis took several hundred hours to complete, and we would need some of this to be resourced. At this point, we have no funding for this work. “Pending funding, and after carrying out the analysis, we will make all responses to requests available to everyone via our website. We would love to see different groups in our community creating fantastic new resources and conversations around preventing and responding to partner and sexual violence using this information, and we’re happy to help however we can.” If you’re interested in asking Hohou Te Rongo Kahukura – Outing Violence for further data analysis, please send an email to Sandra at lovingrainbowlove@gmail.com with answers to the following questions by Friday 2 December. Your name: Preferred contact details: Community group (if applicable): Other belonging (if applicable): What is your data analysis request: Who would this information benefit? - 24th November 2016