Confidentiality

We want to use this space to address some of the ways we are preserving confidentiality during our study.

Identifying and living as a Queer Muslim can be complex in the many communities of belonging, especially with family, kin, work, and with friends. There are many ways of being Queer, as well as being Muslim—there is no one right way. The research team is comprised of individuals who identify as Queer Muslims. We welcome your intersectional lived experiences and would love to chat with you about your experiences  in accessing and using social services from both mainstream LGBTQ+ and Muslim organizations.

It is totally okay if you are not out with family and friends, and it is totally okay if you are out as well. We will not ‘out’ or share your private information.  The research team will protect your privacy and will not disclose your name, not out you to your family members, or give away information about your gender identity and expression or sexual identity. We collect this information to track who we are talking to and how we can respectfully address you during the interview. All of the information which has your name and contact information will only be seen by the research assistant and Maryam Khan (a Queer Muslim) who is the principal researcher.    

Interviewing Virtual Platform

Until pandemic restrictions are lifted, the interviews will be conducted virtually. We are primarily using Zoom for Healthcare and MS Teams to conduct our interviews. These platforms have been recommended and approved by the Wilfrid Laurier University Information and Communications Technologies department for type 3 restricted data, which includes research interviews. Please note that screen capture and closed captioning is not available with this version of Zoom to protect confidentiality. If there are accessibility concerns around this, you can e-mail us to let us know.  

Incognito Mode

If you are concerned about someone being aware of your browsing history, we recommend that you surf this website using incognito mode on your browser. If you forget to use incognito mode, you can also clear your browsing history after visiting this website. For other ways to keep cyber-safe and learn about privacy tips, check out this website (https://hackblossom.org/cybersecurity/).   

Generic E-mail

Our e-mail address is a generic e-mail address (muslims.socialservices) so that you are not outed if someone is monitoring your e-mail.

Code-Word

If you are in a situation when you are living with family and your family is not aware of your sexuality or gender identity and expression, you can connect with us beforehand and we can discuss the use of a code-word. This code-word can be used at any point during the interview, to signal to the researcher that you would like us to change the topic of discussion right away. Example: we decide on the code-word “blue”. So as we are going through the interview questions, and the researcher hears you say the word “blue”, the researcher will immediately change the topic and start discussing a research assignment for school (if you are a student) or something work-related.