In this episode of 'I Can See CLRiE Now', we take a closer look at the 'Thriving on Campus' project, which is a comprehensive study being conducted across Ontario to examine the experiences, wellbeing, and academic development of 2SLGBTQ+ university students. We had the pleasure of speaking with Dr. Michael Woodford and his team to explore the project's findings and the potential impacts it could have on the 2SLGBTQ+ community. This study fills a significant knowledge gap in Canada by providing a comprehensive understanding of the 2SLGBTQ+ student population, which has long been underrepresented in large-scale national studies. Ultimately, this project aims to contribute to the development of postsecondary education policies and programs that will improve the academic and overall wellbeing outcomes of 2SLGBTQ+ students. Today’s conversation focuses on the research methodology, survey design, participants and key findings from the study.
Glossary of Terms
Our Guests
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SPEAKERS
Shawna Reibling, Michael Woodford, Eric Van Giessen, Tin Vo, Simon Coulombe, Kristen Renn, Lauren Munro,
Shawna Reibling 00:15
Welcome to the 'I Can See CLRiE Now' podcast. This podcast is designed to fulfill the mission of the Center for leading research in education, to mobilize leading education knowledge completed by their members and students involved in the research center to the wider public and those who can benefit from the knowledge.
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Shawna Reibling 00:43
So, thank you so much for joining me today. I know we only have part of the thriving on campus team to talk about it and a large number of people are involved. So, I wonder if Michael, you could introduce yourself and some of the people that were involved in the thriving on campus project.
Michael Woodford 00:58
Thanks so much for the opportunity and really glad to be able to talk about the thriving on campus project. So, I'm Michael Woodford. I use he/him pronouns, and I'm a faculty member with the Faculty of Social Work here at Laurier. And I'm also the principal investigator for the 'Thriving on Campus' project, which is actually consists of two projects, a study which was funded by SSHRC through an insight grant and also a connection grant, which is really focusing on knowledge mobilization. Today, I'm joined by two of my colleagues who have been instrumental to aspects of our project. And I just want to note that really the Thriving on Campus project, as an interdisciplinary project has involved many different scholars and collaborators.
Shawna Reibling 01:42
I love the fact that you're doing the research as well as really putting concerned effort towards mobilizing it so that it benefits the wider world. Eric, did you want to introduce yourself?
Eric Van Giessen 01:53
Sure, my name is Eric Van Giessen. I use he/they pronouns. I'm a PhD student at York University in sociology. And I've been working with the 'Thriving on Campus' project for several years on the qualitative interviews portion, and helping to coordinate the connections grant over the last year. So,
Shawna Reibling 02:12
Thank you. Thank you for joining us. And finally, Tin, can you please introduce yourself and your role in the project.
Tin Vo 02:17
So, my name is Tin and I use he/they pronouns. I'm a postdoctoral fellow in the School of Public Health at the University of Toronto. And my role with the thriving project has been as a research assistant and a collaborator on the connection grant.
Shawna Reibling 02:35
So, thank you for talking about this today. I wanted to start with the principal investigator, Michael Woodford to tell the listeners what is thriving on campus?
Michael Woodford 02:45
Thriving on campus is a multi-year 2SLGBTQ campus climate study and change project. It started with a mixed method study that included a scan of campus policies and resources for queer and trans students. Then it moved into a survey that engaged nearly four thousand 2SLGBTQ students in the province and then finally ended with a qualitative phase which was a series of qualitative interviews with a sub sample from the survey. You'll notice that I also refer to it as a change project. And really, that change project has been our efforts to share and mobilize findings both as part of the original study, but also as part of a recent connection grant, which is really featured and been centered around a virtual conference series that we've run this past academic year, which continues today. And I'm obviously going to be talking more about that as we move forward. The emphasis of thriving has been really on trying to understand the experiences, the strength, the well-being, and the academic development of diverse queer and trans university students throughout Ontario. And in fact, it's the first study of its kind here in Canada. And I would think also one of the largest specific 2SLGBTQ campus climate studies conducted to date. And I say that specific in terms of there are certainly large studies that engage queer and trans students as part of the population, but this is specifically a study looking at issues affecting queer and trans students on campuses. And so, it is certainly a rich opportunity and so much for us to learn. Our commitment has really been to make campuses more inclusive and responsive to the needs of diverse queer and trans students. And thus, knowledge mobilization has been really central to what we've been doing. And given with that background, it's not a surprise to hear that from the outset, we engaged an advisory committee that consisted of 2SLGBTQ organizations, also student organizations, and individuals from student affairs and equity fields, and they really helped to shape the study and also our mobilization efforts.
Shawna Reibling 05:01
Can you tell me more about the data that went into the study?
Michael Woodford 05:06
Happy to do so. So, we had three sources of data. The first source was a scan of university policies, resources and services that are specifically designed for 2SLGBTQ students. So, that also included things such as facilities, the availability of inclusive or gender-neutral washrooms, and housing, for example. That gave us what we call the structural climate. And we got that information through a scan of websites, but also by surveying leaders in campuses, and in terms of student affairs. Next, we did a very extensive provincial survey with 2SLGBTQ identified students. And that really got us an understanding of their experiences of the climate, but also their perceptions of the climate. So, we're talking about experiential and psychological climate in that regard. But also, it's really important for us to ask, how is that impacting their well-being and their academics. So, we also explored academic outcomes and wellbeing indicators. And given the framing of our study, we also wanted to look at things such as social support and connections to community connections to their campuses, and even their use of resources, such as queer and trans students’ centers, for example. Then finally, we did a series of interviews which were done with a sub sample of the survey participants, 50 of them, in fact, and those were done as follow up interviews to understand some of the quantitative survey data, but more importantly, to also look at student's lived experiences of their campuses, especially around belonging and safety. And we also ask students about their recommendations for change.
Shawna Reibling 06:44
It's great to ask people from their lived experience exactly what they need to make sure that the study really got at what it needed to help build not only surviving but thriving. Before we get into more details of this study, I wonder what prompted this study.
Michael Woodford 07:01
To do so I'm going to turn it over to my colleague, Simon Coulombe, who talked about this in one of our webinars,
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Simon Coulombe 07:08
A lot of research focused on campus climate, and 2SLGBTQ+ students has been mostly done in the US. So, it's really important to do more research in Ontario and in Canada more broadly. As we see, people are experiencing different forms of victimization and negative climate, it seems to have impact on their academic development, outcome, persistence and engagement. So, we need to continue implementing policies and programs addressing victimization and addressing climate on campus.
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Michael Woodford 07:37
So first of all, very few queer and trans campus climate studies exist in Canada and the ones that exist have been done at single institutions. And they have given us a snapshot of the climate but have not really helped us understand how does it affect students’ well-being and what might be some of the factors that we can try to leverage to foster positive outcomes and resilience among students. So certainly though, in the US, there has been much more attention to the experiences of queer and trans students on university and college campuses. And so, we know from that research that to us LGBTQ students are marginalized, and those experiences can threaten their well-being and interfere with their academic development. So, with this understanding, it was important for us to get a snapshot of what's happening in Canada. Additionally, we wanted to extend the research on to LGBTQ campus climate through our project in several ways. First, we wanted research that was going to be emphasizing students’ strengths and resiliency, and trying to understand the factors that might be fostering their well-being and their academic success. So even though some research has been done in this area, there was a lot more work that needed to be conducted, and we took up that challenge through thriving, including looking at structural factors such as engagement in queer and trans centers on campuses, to looking at some of those aspects was really important to our work. Secondly, Previous research has really paid little attention to students intersecting identities or their positionality, such as race or disability. And in fact, in some cases, some LGBTQ campus climate studies have not really even looked at gender. So given the importance of race, gender, and disability on students’ experiences and their outcome, we set out to conduct a study that was going to really center intersectionality, in particular gender, race, and disability in both our survey and our interview components, and certainly in our findings and our mobilization efforts. Previous research has looked at mental Health but has not really taken a holistic approach to students' mental Health So, for example, the previous work is really focused on negative indicators of mental health such as depression and suicidality. Obviously, these are really important for us to understand and how campus climate relates to them. But we also need to look at mental health and well-being holistically, such as looking at positive aspects such as satisfaction with one's life, connections to community, for example. So that framing was really important for us in terms of both mental health and also academics. So, we looked at, for example, belonging on campus, and academic development, not just academic disengagement, for example, as well, the existing research on campus climate for 2SLGBTQ students has really focused on the negative aspects, such as microaggressions, and experiences of victimization or feeling unsafe on campus. And while that is really important, and that is part of what we're doing, or have done through the thriving project, as our title of our study suggests, we really wanted to shift the discourse to look more holistically to look at not just surviving campuses, but also thriving. And so that was part of our framing for the study, in terms of both the survey and the interviews. And I would say it was really instrumental in the interviews and in fact, we asked students to talk about how they understood thriving and what campuses could do to foster thriving and help students flourish on campuses.
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Kristen Renn 11:07
The thriving study fills critical gaps in the field of higher education, research and practice. As a study of 2SLGBTQIA+ campus climate, it includes multiple institutions of different sizes and types, which is not always the case in studies of campus climate. The thriving study is, therefore, very well positioned to support claims about higher education broadly, and not only for a single campus. The diversity and size of the sample of students in a thriving study is also an important addition to research policy and practice. As the diversity across races, genders and other key student characteristics, allows for a more nuanced exploration of 2SLGBTQIA+ student experiences and outcomes. Finally, the multilevel factors that provide insight that can guide campus implementation of policies and programs to promote student wellbeing and academic success. The thriving study is a very rare and important large-scale effort that will benefit higher education in Ontario, Canada, and other nations
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Shawna Reibling 12:03
Thank you for sharing that quote from one of your collaborators, Kris Renn about the project filling a critical gap, conducting a large-scale study that had multiple forms of data and a province wide scope really builds the information we have in this area and really fills the gap in addressing the experiences on campus. I wonder what the significance of this research is to the participants. And what makes this research different than the previous studies in this area? You mentioned that it included intersectionality, as part of the research, are there other things that were instrumental in this project?
Michael Woodford 12:36
Certainly, a key aspect of the project is that we've been driven by the principle that to achieve equity on campuses for diverse 2SLGBTQ+ students, we have to understand their experiences and their strengths, and what campuses can do to make a difference and the commitment to knowledge dissemination and specifically mobilization has been quite critical to the overall project going from the study to the knowledge mobilization stage where we are now. Certainly, as the first province wide campus climate study to focus specifically on 2SLGBTQ+ university students and by providing a holistic picture of their experiences throughout the province. We have provided key communities, so that being student groups, service providers, policymakers, researchers, and advocates, with evidence so that they can better understand how campus climate can positively or negatively impact students, but also gaining insights about what are some of the factors that might be able to be leveraged to foster positive outcomes and make change. And ultimately, our goal has been to provide findings that can aid service providers, policymakers, and advocates to make changes and to advocate for those changes to make essentially campuses more inclusive, and more responsive to the needs of queer and trans students. And so certainly, our virtual conference series, which took place during the 2020-23 academic year, which is still ongoing, has been really about that - making change. So, I think in addition to making those contributions to the body of research on 2SLGBTQ campus climate, we've been intentionally action oriented. By focusing on mobilizing our findings in ways to make an impact on the everyday lives of 2SLGBTQ students across the province and working with our partners. Being able to provide them with evidence to make change, including advocacy, has been really a critical goal and an outcome for our project.
Shawna Reibling 14:40
This work that you're doing has a very deep research component, but also an advocacy and outreach and dissemination and a way to put the findings into action to make changes in the world. So first, tell me about the details of the survey and what you learned and what the survey measured.
Michael Woodford 14:58
So, the survey asked about students’ identities, obviously their gender, their sexuality, their race, disability and many other salient identities, and also looked at aspects of the campus climate, both in terms of the perceptions and their experiences and for experiences, we looked at microaggressions. We also looked at experiences of victimization, and incivility. And as well, we looked at their mental health, their academics, and also sources of support and resilience. So, with respect to support, we asked, for example, about social support their connections with other 2SLGBTQ students on campus, how many 2SLGBTQ plus staff and faculty they might know, their involvement in and support that they received from 2SLGBTQ student groups, just as some illustrations. Going back to the perceptions of the climate, we developed and tested a new measure that examined different aspects of the perceived climate. This included things such as perceptions of the attitudes and the treatment of LGBTQ people on campuses, and also included things such as pedagogical representation, perceptions of 2SLGBTQ policies, also perceptions of university leadership and commitment to advancing 2SLGBTQ inclusion. Understanding that perceptions of the climate in terms of those different aspects can vary for those who identify as being sexual minorities versus folks who identify as being gender minority, we actually created a trans and LGBQ versions of this particular measure. So certainly, having such a comprehensive scale is quite unique and helps researchers and policymakers to better understand different aspects of the climate and how it relates to student outcomes. And based on our commitment to support change on campuses, we also inquired about things such as students’ perceptions of name and gender change policies and practices the availability of gender inclusive washrooms. So, for example, are there enough of these washrooms and on your campus, are they advertised well? Similarly, we asked about gender inclusive housing. So, having that data was really important to give back to our partners on campuses to think about where are some of those moments for change? Similarly, we asked about students' use in their perceptions of general campus services, such as recreation and health and wellness centers. And working from a quality improvement stance, documenting how responsive the students found these services was really important. Again, to give back to the communities and to universities to think about where might they want to start making some changes, for example, investing in staff training and reviewing policies and resources?
Shawna Reibling 17:43
Can you explain what you mean by a quality improvement stance?
Michael Woodford 17:46
So, this was from our advisory committee thinking about the need to have data of how well are we doing? Often we don't collect information specifically from 2SLGBTQ+ students about our services. So what are their perceptions of those services in terms of being responsive to their identities? Are staff knowledgeable about their needs and experiences? Are staff treating them respectfully, for example, and even how satisfied are students with those services?
Shawna Reibling 18:20
Making sure that your survey tools and your interview tools reflected what you wanted to measure, including the impact of intersectionality on these outcomes has created an amazing data source that people can use moving forward, that's amazing.
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Shawna Reibling 18:43
Thank you for sharing the innovations in the survey, and the breadth of questions and the detail that went into crafting it. I wonder if you could tell me about the sample size.
Michael Woodford 18:53
We were able to recruit a large survey sample of four thousand 2SLGBTQ identified students. A strength of that sample is its diversity, in that we had a large representation of trans and gender diverse students, so 29% of our sample. We also had 28% of our students who were identifying as racialized or black, indigenous and students of color. We also have 70% of the sample who identified as being disabled or living with a condition that affects their experiences on campus. And as well, we had 15% of our sample being graduate students. A number of these studies tend to be very undergraduate focus. And then also our interviews were intentionally diverse in terms of thinking about some of the identities that we were recruiting from those who are interested in being interviewed. And so, as I mentioned, we conducted 50 follow-up qualitative interviews. 25 of the participants were trans 25 were cisgender in that their gender identity correspond ones with their sex assigned at birth. Also 20 of them identify as being racialized, 34 of the participants living with a disability or condition impacting their experiences as a student, and 26 of them were graduate students. So again, that importance of diversity, it was really aligned with our commitment to intersectionality. And to be able to look at some of the nuanced experiences based on disability race, and also gender.
Shawna Reibling 20:27
Can you put those percentages into a bit of context in terms of what previous studies have looked at, or representation and how the study has really moved the bar in that area?
Michael Woodford 20:38
So, thinking about our survey sample, this, I would say, is probably one of the most diverse samples to date, that’s specifically around 2SLGBTQ students. And it's so important for us to think about the diversity of the queer and trans community and for the sample to reflect that. And so, one of many positive aspects is the fact that we had such a large inclusion of students who are part of the trans community that were able to look at nuances and subgroups within that. So, for example, looking at students who identify as being non-binary compared to students who are a part of the trans women spectrum and the trans men spectrum, for example. So being able to, again, look at how those different identities and positionalities may affect their experiences and their outcome is certainly a strength. Similarly, with respect to race, sadly, a lot of our previous research has been very white, we're going to say, and so having such racial diversity is again another strength of the survey. So, and disability has not really been centered a lot in 2SLGBTQ campus climate research, with some exceptions, that research has been very qualitative in nature. And this being able to have such a large sample and being able to think about how disability is impacting students’ experiences is also quite a rich contribution to both the research but also the field and thinking about how do we better support disabled 2SLGBTQ+ students?
Shawna Reibling 22:13
Tin, could you share some of the key findings of the thriving on campus study?
Tin Vo 22:18
Given our ability to conduct intersectional analyses, I'll start by sharing findings related to gender. With such a large sample, we can look at the diversity among trans students while exploring the experiences of discrimination on campus. And while 12% of all respondents reported being followed in a threatening manner on campus in the past year, we found that the rate among non-binary students was much higher at 19%. Another example, 17% of all respondents reported experiencing verbal threats on campus in the past year. These rates were considerably higher for trans students, so 28% for trans men spectrum 25% for trans women spectrum and 23% for non-binary folks. And this is in comparison to the cis-gender students, where cis-gender men identified 18% of the time that they experienced verbal threats, and 16% of cis-gender women experience. Knowing that particular groups of students including subgroups of trans students are at higher risk for various forms of victimization on campus means that campuses need to design prevention and support programs that are responsive to these students. Students who face greater discrimination on campus, including victimization, and microaggressions report more negative outcomes. So, for instance, trans students who experienced two types of victimization were more than three times more likely to seriously consider leaving their university, while cis-gender, LGBQ students who experienced two types of victimization were two and a half times more likely to seriously consider leaving their university. I wanted to speak briefly about the perceptions of the climate. For most aspects of the perceived climate while students reported perceptions were positive, they were not overly positive. And in fact, we're very close to neutral as well, except for one aspect of the climate, namely perceptions of collective attitudes. Students’ perceptions of inclusivity were statistically significantly poorer for trans students compared to LGBQ students. And you might be wondering what this means for students' well-being and academics. The students who perceive the campus climate to be less inclusive for 2SLGBTQ students generally reported poor mental health and academic outcomes. For example, those who had lower perceptions of university policies in terms of of today's LGBTQ equity and inclusion, were found to be more likely to seriously consider leaving their university have poor mental health and feel less connected to their university and satisfied with their university. Pedagogy matters too. So students who reported lower perceptions of 2SLGBTQ inclusion in pedagogy in terms of content, materials and the nature of how content is presented and discussed, they tended to also report things like greater psychological distress, lower positive mental health, lower feelings of connectedness to their university, lower satisfaction with their academic experience, greater disengagement with their studies and greater academic stress. With respect to policies and services on campus, let me share a few key findings that highlight the important areas of change. About 75% of respondents indicated there needed to be more gender inclusive washrooms. 63% said that current gender inclusive washrooms were not conveniently located, and 64% said that their location was not very well advertised. Looking towards the general student services, a relatively large percentage of respondents graded services positively, especially in terms of feeling welcomed and respected. However, there's room for improvement, in particular, when delivering services to non-binary students. Across all staff services, the lowest percentage of respondents tended to agree that staff were knowledgeable about just LGBTQ students’ needs and were skilled in providing them services. Based on student satisfaction, considerable improvements were needed in medical services, mental health services and career counseling services. With respect to some of the efforts to foster inclusion, among the trans students who had lived in gender inclusive housing, they reported really positive experiences. So, for instance, 91% found that staff were welcoming and respectful.
Shawna Reibling 27:13
Thanks for sharing those findings with us, Tin. I wonder if you wanted to share what one of your collaborators Kris Renn have said about these findings.
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Kristen Renn 27:22
Evidence from the thriving study makes clear that it is incumbent on us as educators and leaders to address barriers to student success that are embedded in post-secondary policies, programs, structures and curricula. These barriers show up in campus climate and influence student well-being and success.
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Shawna Reibling 27:39
Thank you, Tin, for sharing these survey results in the findings that were revealed in your work, Kristen's comments about how these barriers that you found show up in campus climate is really impactful and can be used very directly in making ways to make change on campuses based on these findings. After completing the surveys, you moved into the interview portion of the thriving on campus survey. Eric, can you tell us a little bit more about the interview portion.
Eric Van Giessen 28:10
So, the interview portion was a follow up to the survey stage, where fifty 2SLGBTQ+ students were selected for semi structured interviews. Let's hear from one of my colleagues and collaborators Lauren Munro about the interview sample, and what the interviews explored.
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Lauren Munro 28:26
Given the importance of considering students' myriad identities we attended to diversity across race, disability and institutional context. And by institutional context, they mean things like size, urban and rural locations and academic offerings. So, we sampled across those criteria. Now the interviews covered a range of topics, including day to day experiences, the good and the bad, belonging on campus, hopes for the overall student experience, discrimination, community, safe and unsafe spaces, and engagement with 2SLGBTQ+ groups, and spaces on campus to name a few.
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Eric Van Giessen 29:07
Some of the key findings from the interviews were that students had varying definitions and expectations of what thriving means, ranging from individual to institutional perspectives. As Lauren Munro noted,
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Lauren Munro 29:21
2SLGBTQ+ students know what they need to thrive. It was important that we made space within the interviews for students to share their own definitions of thriving, which we can then use to offer institutions opportunities to meaningfully support and collaborate with 2SLGBTQ+ students.
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Eric Van Giessen 29:42
So, we drew a lot on the interview data for two of the community reports that we'll talk about shortly, namely the report that addressed the experiences of black indigenous and other students of color, and another one that focused on disabled students' experiences. Returning to the findings from the thriving on campus interviews, I want to share what BIPOC, or racialized students offered by turning to my colleague Tin, who was a part of the BIPOC working group.
Tin Vo 30:07
For BIPOC students holistic support toward flourishing or thriving included feeling safe and able to express their full personhood beyond a specific identity. So, for example, beyond being a 2SLGBTQ person or a student. Holistic support would require an integrated intersectional campus experience, including representation of diverse identities among faculty and staff as well as students. These key components were seen as necessary for students to thrive, and that is to move beyond basic survival and safety to truly grow and flourish. BIPOC students say that acceptance and inclusion would result from intersectional approaches embedded in all curricular activities, and social opportunities for students. And this would include discussions of gender and sexuality across all courses and all subjects. This intentional intersectional approach would also involve social opportunities across campus spaces that are queer and trans friendly, not solely within 2SLGBTQ specific social groups. Participants discussed the importance of including the voices of diverse students in meaningful ways when making policies and in other decision-making processes.
Shawna Reibling 30:13
Thank you, Tin and Eric, for sharing the findings from the interviews as part of the thriving on campus study. In our next segment, we'll be talking about the knowledge mobilization that was embedded in the thriving on campus study and how these findings influenced that knowledge mobilization going forward. Stay tuned for more episodes featuring CLRiE researchers, students and community partners in conversation about leading education research. Follow CLRiE on Twitter or subscribe wherever you get your podcasts. Thanks to all who've been instrumental in the production of this episode. The CLRiE podcast was recorded and produced on the traditional territory of the Neutral, Anishinaabe and Haudenosaunee peoples. For more information click on the land acknowledgement link on our show notes. This episode of 'I Can See CLRiE Now' was made with support from Laurier's Office of Research Services.