Homophobia and Heterosexism Term Paper

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Homophobia and Heterosexism

Berkman and Zinberg's (1997) study "Homophobia and Heterosexism in Social Workers" examines the prevalence of homophobia and heterosexism in social workers. The researchers also correlate the relative homophobia or heterosexism with a variety of other factors such as gender, level of education about homosexuality, level of contact with gay men and lesbians, and religiosity. The authors create their research hypothesis based on prior research; however, much prior research in this area is significantly limited in scope and/or outdated. Therefore, the current study seeks to address the shortcomings in the literature on this subject matter. Moreover, the authors not only want to assess the rate of homophobia or heterosexism within the American social worker population but also determine whether or not these biases would impact their treatment of gay or lesbian clients. Social workers are employed in the service of others to help them cope with a variety of challenging life situations, from severe illness to spousal abuse. Therefore, these health care professionals should not bring personal biases to the workplace because it can negatively impact quality of treatment. This study seeks to determine the nature and extent of social workers' homophobic or heterosexist biases. Unfortunately, homophobia and heterosexism are unconscious biases that are difficult to study scientifically; the results of this study are based almost exclusively on self-reports.

According to the authors, homophobia is defined as "fear, disgust, anger, discomfort or aversion" to homosexual people, while heterosexism is defined as a more unconscious but pervasive sense that heterosexuality is a preferable and superior sexual orientation (p. 320). Ethical considerations of this research are clearly addressed by the authors: population samples were random and participation was voluntary.

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The means to measure homophobia and heterosexism include a range of questionnaires, which pose no harm at all to respondents. Moreover, anonymity and confidentiality were guaranteed. As the questionnaires were straightforward, there was no need to deceive subjects as to the nature of the study. Findings were thoroughly addressed, even when the results did not corroborate the research hypotheses, and the potential benefits to the study easily outweigh the few, if any, costs involved. These questionnaires were administered randomly to social workers with MSWs, all of whom were members of the NASW; because observations were made at one time, this study is cross-sectional.

One research hypothesis tested in this design was that education regarding homosexuality would have an inverse effect on homophobia or heterosexism. Therefore, the dependent variable in this case is the relative level of homophobia or heterosexism, while the independent variable is amount of education on topics related to homosexuality. Prior research had shown that education about homosexuality led to less homophobia and heterosexism in the target population. However, the current study showed no correlation between education and homophobia. Berkman….....

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