whatknows :: do you?

May 30, 2004

Coming Out with Stories: Macrocontextual effects on the coming out stories of young gay men

Filed under: Academic — Jed @ 6:18 pm

University of Utah LogoDuring my undergraduate thesis at the University of Utah, I got the opportunity to spend a year and a half working with Dr. Pasupathi. This entry is simply to provide an online location for that thesis. It has been backdated to the completion date of what was an incredibly exciting project.

Here is a taste:

Our major goal is show that duration of time involved with the gay and lesbian community correlates with narrative prototypicallity. We expect that individuals who have been out for longer periods of time will have had more opportunities to collaboratively construct their coming out story with other gays and lesbians, leading tomore influence from the gay and lesbian community on that story. We also expect that the degree of narrative socialization should be positively correlated with the degree of enculturation and integration with the gay and lesbian community. What is the effect of this increased narrative socialization? My exploratory hypothesis predicts that narrative socialization with be positively correlated with measures of well being.

Read the entire thesis.