Understanding how rural men who have sex with men (MSM) manage their sexual identities: A grounded theory approach
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Rurality remains a relatively unexplored territory when considering the research on men who have sex with other men (MSM). This study addresses the knowledge gap in the research literature about how MSM manage their sexual identities in rural areas and small towns across Ontario, Canada. This unique exploratory study examined the intersection of sexuality, rurality and notions of masculinity in the rural Canadian context. More specifically, this study explored how rural MSM actually negotiate their sexual identities and serves to enhance our limited understanding of context and identity. This study employed a constructivist grounded theory design as espoused by Charmaz (2006) to develop a substantive theory on rural MSM. Qualitative interviews were conducted with 32 rural men across 28 geographic locales consisting of populations of less than 10,000 people. Men were interviewed primarily within their context and to obtain an understanding of their lived experiences. The results indicate that rural MSM are affected by numerous variables but three major themes emerged. MSM manage their sexual identities through on-going negotiations about their sexual identity, through their relationships with their community (local and urban) and their religious/spiritual beliefs. In responding to these negotiations, each participant was affected by how long he had resided in the rural context. Based upon a man's length of time within the rural environment, two general identity groups emerged: 'natives' and 'transplanters'. Each identity group managed their sexual identities in distinct ways. Finally, the general findings from the study are explored in relation to their implications for future research on MSM, and social work education and practice.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.008 | 0.004 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.002 | 0.002 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.007 | 0.013 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.005 | 0.004 |
| Open science | 0.002 | 0.003 |
| Research integrity | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".