Goddess help me, here goes another study...

purplerabbit and I are planning a research study on the psychological functioning of children in poly families. There is a desperate need for such a study, because there is currently no empirical basis for the determination of custody cases in which any of the parents are poly, and too many such cases have been decided on the basis of judicial prejudice.

Tonight I finally started working on the lit review. There are links on the APA website to studies that have been done on the psychological functioning of children raised by lesbian and gay parents. I plan to read these studies to get a sense of which aspects of psychological functioning are most commonly measured; which aspects are most commonly examined by the courts when determining LGBT parenting rights; and which assessment instruments are used to measure these.

Then the goal is to choose a few of these assessment instruments (hopefully simple-to-score paper and pencil ones!), and recruit psychologists in various cities to administer them to children of poly families that volunteer to be participants in the study.

Eventually, when we've got our instruments chosen and our test admins in place, we'll send out a recruitment call for participants. We will likely exclude from the study any kids who are personally known to us, so that we do not run the risk of actual or apparent bias. We'll keep y'all updated as the work progresses!

I really am not all that fond of doing research, unlike my academic-to-the-gills girlfriend whose excitement somehow manages to spur even my own kludgy research motors into gear. But it needs to be done, and there are relatively few poly psychologist researchers out there, and I would appear to be one of them. I feel some responsibility to use the privilege and vocal power inherent in this PhD to better the world around me, and adding to the body of practical poly psych research is one of the best ways that I can think of to do it.

Our other planned project is a book on poly counseling. I've written 3 articles on the topic all ready, but those barely scratch the surface of helping other counselors to truly learn how to do this work. The research study on kids of poly families seems to be more imminently needed, though, so that's where we'll turn our attention first.