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Wednesday, September 28, 2005

 

Press release - Counseling practices and reorientation therapy

Grove City College press release regarding the study of counseling practices and reorientation therapy.

Comments:
I had a look through your study and it doesn't seem to be representative of society in general.

Polling the ex-gay forums and lists for your subjects may be okay if you are seeking to provide feedback to make the "x-gay" experience better, but there seems to be a logical gap that is not addressed as to how your research applies to people in general.

Professional psychological practice means that there is an ethical standard to be upheld in dealing with clients and with educating the public in regards to psychological practice and theory. By presenting this study in this way, I have seen numerous people, all illiterate in the field of psychology, use your work as a means to claim sexual reorintation therapy as a whole is a benefit to all who may approach it.

Unfortunately, as I pointed out earlier, your research doesn't deal with this, instead focussing on only the positive responses to sexual sexual reorintation therapy.

Perhaps you should put up a post on all your sites educating users and organisations (such as Exodus International) to the scope and validity of this study.
 
From the study (p. 19): We are aware that we investigated only those participants who indicated they were pursuing or had pursued a goal of sexual reorientation.

(p. 18) Certainly this study should be replicated with a larger sample size and via more representative sampling techniques.

What makes you think I claim the study to be generalizable to the population at large? It cannot be generalized beyond people who are seeking reorientation counseling.
 
PS - If you got it from a media source, keep in mind that the media makes these same generalizations about nearly all studies of sexual orientation. When a genetic study comes out, the media writer does not talk about generalizing only to Kinsey 6s or to whatever the demographics of the sample were.
 
I'm not saying you claim the study is be generalizable to the population at large.

People, usually those involved in ex-gay ministries, have taken your work and used it to claim all sexual reorintation therapy is positive.

Is there any way you can forsee to prevent ex-gay ministries, usually being psychologically illiterate, from misusing your work ?
 
I can only tell them and call them on it when they do not use it correctly. If you see this going on, let me know. I am curious what Hamer does to keep his work from being misused...
 
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