Publications

Coccia, E., et al. (2024) [pdf here]

Abstract

This essay argues that the concept of ambivalence could be leveraged as a feminist project with specific epistemological value for scholars across the humanities and social sciences. Curating its recent appearance across several areas of study, we suggest the potential of ambivalence as a feminist analytic. We argue that this analytic may help feminist scholars understand the complexity of texts, people, and social circumstances—both past and present—because it offers a conceptual category that holds space for conflicting emotions, contending historical phenomena, and overlapping affective, ethical, and political commitments. We see unique value for feminist scholarship when ambivalence is foregrounded; it asks us to consider important tensions and binaries between subjection and liberation, certainty and uncertainty, and skepticism and conviction. Reconceptualizing ambivalence as a capacity and structural condition (rather than an individual deficiency or failing), we render this concept legible for feminists across various fields and disciplines. We propose three principles that could guide its uptake in scholarship: troubling the subjection/liberation binary, elevating the value of uncertainty, and encouraging constructive ambivalence in the researcher themself. While mindful of the risks and limits of ambivalence, we encourage others to adopt ambivalence as an analytic in their own work, describing the specific gains to be had in affectively and epistemologically sitting with the contradictions and discomforts it reveals.

McClelland, S. I., & Dutcher, H. (2024, 2016)

2nd Edition, 2024 [pdf here]

1st Edition, 2016 [pdf here]

Abstract

Heterosexist bias systematically limits what we know and imagine about the world as a result of conceptualizing human experience in strictly heterosexual terms. The term bias describes a prejudice against or an inclination toward some ideas or people over others, and as a result, bias creates prejudices within social structures, policies, and conventions. Heterosexism is a foundational system that oppresses non-heterosexually identified individuals. Heterosexism stems from the assumption that heterosexuality is natural, universal, and therefore inevitable. In turn, sexualities and identities such as lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans, and queer (LGBTQ) are assumed to be not natural, not universal, and/or not inevitable. As a result, heterosexism ignores, rejects, and stigmatizes non-heterosexual identities, behaviors, and relationships.

Davis T. M., Papp L. J., Baker M. R., & McClelland, S. I. (2023) [pdf here]

Abstract

Objectives: The present study examined the measurement invariance of the Symbolic Racism Scale (SRS) and the Modern Sexism Scale (MSS) across racial/ethnic and gender groups. Previous psychometric evaluations of the SRS and MSS scores have not examined the equivalence across racial/ethnic and gender groups or have been otherwise statistically inadequate. Therefore, this study sought to fill this gap. Method: To establish measurement equivalence across racial/ethnic (Black, Latinx, and white) and gender (women and men) groups, we conducted a measurement invariance analysis of the SRS and the MSS in a large, diverse sample (N = 719). Results: We found that the SRS and MSS were invariant across gender, and the SRS was invariant across racial/ethnic groups. However, the MSS was noninvariant across racial/ethnic groups. Partial invariance testing revealed nonequivalent factor loadings between Black and Latinx participants compared to white participants on an item of the MSS that referenced “unwarranted” attention that women receive from the government and media. Conclusions: Researchers should consider reevaluating the item that reads: “Over the past few years, the government and news media have been showing more concern about the treatment of women than is warranted by women’s actual experiences.” Future research is needed to assess how the item is interpreted by Black and Latinx people so it can be modified for use in these communities. Our findings underscore the importance of assessing the validity of the scores in commonly used scales across diverse groups.

McClelland, S. I., Dutcher, H., & Crawford, B. (2020) [pdf here]

Abstract

We investigated the content of survey items to assess whether and how racist and sexist stereotypes are woven into the fabric of research on attitudes about abortion in the United States. We collected and analyzed a comprehensive set of survey items (456 items from 80 studies) used in peer‐reviewed research published from 2008 to 2018 in representative and nonrepresentative studies of U.S. respondents. Our analysis was guided by historical narratives that have been influential in shaping representations of women and reproduction in the United States (e.g., the Moynihan Report). With this background, we developed three themes pertaining to how individuals’ attitudes about abortion are measured: we found that items rely on (1) moral, (2) sexual, and (3) financial evaluations of women seeking abortion care. These themes highlighted implicit and explicit judgments of women, including representations of them as unwilling to partner with men and as fiscally and sexually irresponsible. We argue that survey items meant to objectively assess abortion attitudes draw on negative racial and gender stereotypes and that these stereotypes then travel widely under the veneer of scientific objectivity. Critical methods, such as the item bank analysis described in this study, are crucial to discern how inequality, prejudice, and discrimination can be reproduced in the fabric of research methods. In our discussion, we offer suggestions for researchers to reduce these and related forms of bias in survey‐based abortion research.

McClelland, S. I. (2018) [pdf here]

Abstract

As social scientists studying adolescences and young adulthood are increasingly drawn to critical perspectives in their research, many still wonder how to proceed and what methods are available. The modifier of “critical,” as I use it here, signals a researcher’s commitment to accounting for and examining the role of inequality, even when it might be difficult to observe, has become normalized, or is disavowed by participants. In order to encourage readers to use critical methods in their work, I draw on four examples from my own research. I start with a discussion of the self-anchored ladder, a method that invests in meanings that participants bring to research and how these affect the scores they provide. Second, I discuss survey marginalia methods that invite participants into the research dynamic, thickening the already complicated definitions of “inside” and “outside” a survey design. Third, I discuss Q methods as a way to ask participants to show us their thoughts, creating a mosaic of associations that can be analyzed empirically as well as used as a way to invite complicated and messy lives into the research. Finally, I discuss interview analysis strategies, which focus on adaptation to injustice within the interview dynamic and present potential analytics frameworks to contend with cellophane as it appears in qualitative interviews.

Fahs, B., Swank, E., & McClelland, S. I. (2018) [pdf here]

Abstract

The study of women’s sexuality has been fraught with contradictions and conflict, yet it provides a fruitful mechanism to examine social inequalities, power relationships, cultural norms, social scripts, and values about gender and social identities. In the 30 years since Carole Vance (1983) posited that women grapple with the tension between pleasure and danger and face ambivalence about how to experience and express their sexuality, research on women’s sexuality has broadened the narratives about what sexuality means. As Vance (1993) wrote 10 years after the publication of Pleasure and Danger, “For women to experience autonomous desire and act in ways that give them sexual pleasure in a society that would nurture and protect their delights is at the same time our culture’s worst nightmare and feminism’s best fantasy” (p. 289). For feminist psychologists in particular, women’s sexuality, often framed by this pleasure and danger dialectic, has proven to be extraordinarily complicated (becoming all the more difficult to theorize, study, label, and understand) and full of possibilities (providing a lens to examine a whole host of social inequalities and personal experiences). In this chapter, we illustrate the paradox of pleasure and danger by examining points of tension, contradiction, and conflict about women’s sexuality, power, and empowerment.

McClelland, S. I. (2017) [pdf here]

Abstract

In research using self-report measures, there is little attention paid to how participants interpret concepts; instead, researchers often assume definitions are shared, universal, or easily understood. I discuss the self-anchored ladder, adapted from Cantril’s ladder, which is a procedure that simultaneously collects a participant’s self-reported rating and their interpretation of that rating.

Drawing from a study about sexual satisfaction that included a self-anchored ladder, four analyses are presented and discussed in relation to one another: (1) comparisons of sexual satisfaction scores, (2) variations of structures participants applied to the ladder, (3) frequency of terms used to describe sexual satisfaction, and (4) thematic analysis of “best” and “worst” sexual satisfaction.

These analytic strategies offer researchers a model for how to incorporate self-anchored ladder items into research designs as a means to draw out layers of meaning in quantitative, qualitative, and mixed methods data. I argue that the ladder invites the potential for conceptual disruption by prioritizing skepticism in survey research and bringing greater attention to how social locations, histories, economic structures, and other factors shape self-report data. I also address issues related to the multiple epistemological positions that the ladder demands. Finally, I argue for the centrality of epistemological self-reflexivity in critical feminist psychological research.

McClelland, S. I. (2017) [pdf here]

Abstract

Feminist researchers have highlighted the increased hyper- and hetero-sexualization of breast cancer by drawing attention to the gendered dimensions of disease. In a set of interviews with women diagnosed with metastatic disease, I examined how participants labored to fulfill feminine gender and sexual ideals. Two themes were explored: gender labor, which included feeling fat and unattractive, and sexual labor, which included managing partners' sexual demands and sexual pain. This study builds on emergent feminist critiques that challenge expectations for a woman to be a “sexy cancer patient” and highlights how gender and sexual ideals continue to affect women negatively, even when they are extremely ill.

McClelland, S. I. (2017) [pdf here]

Abstract

In this paper, I reflect on an important and infrequently discussed aspect of qualitative research: listening. Listening is often imagined as easy. It is however, is a difficult skill that not only takes practice, but also comes with possibilities and challenges for a researcher. In an effort to develop and elaborate a practice of listening in a research context, I develop the idea of vulnerable listening and offer 3 scenarios from my own research. These include: (a) emotional dangers associated with listening, (b) the often unacknowledged role of the listener’s body, and (c) the role of extreme emotions in research, such as feeling outraged. Drawing on my own experiences interviewing women diagnosed with Stage IV breast cancer, I highlight how researchers who collect data by listening might care for their own and others’ vulnerability. Toward this end, I outline several strategies for researchers looking to support and maintain a practice of vulnerable listening.

Frost, D. M., McClelland, S. I., & Dettmann, M. (2017) [pdf here]

Abstract

This study examined the impact of sexual closeness on sexual well-being. We developed a nuanced and multifaceted conceptualization of sexual closeness in the form of a constellation of ideal sexual closeness with a partner, actual sexual closeness, and the discrepancy between the two. Data were obtained from a diverse sample of N = 619 participants who took part in the Lives and Relationships Study: A longitudinal survey of men and women in relationships living in the U.S. and Canada. Increases in sexual closeness discrepancies over a period of 1 year predicted concomitant decreases in two indicators of sexual well-being: sexual satisfaction and orgasm frequency evaluations. Decreases in sexual closeness discrepancies resulted in improvement in sexual well-being. Individuals who reported no sexual closeness discrepancies and experienced no changes in sexual closeness discrepancies tended to have the highest levels of sexual well-being. Importantly, sexual closeness discrepancies were robust predictors of sexual well-being, above and beyond individuals’ actual sexual closeness, general relationship closeness, and other demographic and relationship characteristics known to be associated with sexual well-being. The present findings demonstrate that how close people feel sexually to their relationship partners is part of a general constellation of factors related to relationship closeness that, only when considered together, sufficiently explain the ways in which experiences of closeness impact sexual well-being in romantic relationships.

Fahs, B., Plante, R., & McClelland, S. I. (2017) [pdf here]

Abstract

For those entering the field of sexuality studies, there is often little advice or guidance on the many facets of the work, some of which are pleasurable and some of which are dangerous. Drawing from our personal and professional conflicts surrounding our work as feminist psychologists and sociologists studying women’s sexuality, we extend Carole Vance’s (1984) claims about pleasure and danger by arguing that, for the sex researcher, pleasure and danger are in fact inverted. That which should give us pleasure (e.g. having our work promoted to the public; teaching critical material about sexuality; thinking deeply about our personal relationships) ends up feeling dangerous, and that which should feel dangerous (e.g. saying and doing and working on taboo things; calling out homophobia, racism, classism, and sexism) ends up giving us pleasure. We examine several areas where we experience personal and professional costs and benefits of doing feminist sex research, including relationships with partners, communication with research participants, pedagogical challenges and conflicts, the interface between the sex-researcher identity and university/institutional practices, and, finally, our interface with the public world and the mass media. In doing so, we aim to use our personal experiences to highlight just a few of the areas that emerging sexuality researchers may encounter. In addition, we extend Vance’s framework of pleasure and danger beyond the experiences of women having sex and into the realm of those seeking to understand, research, write about, theorize, and assess the complicated terrain of women’s sexuality.

McClelland, S. I., Rubin, J. D., & Bauermeister, J. A. (2016) [pdf here]

A podcast conversation with McClelland and editor of PWQ is available here

Abstract

In this study, we link together moments of discrimination described by young bisexual women. We do so in order to theorize about associations between negative stereotypes heard early in one’s life and later minimization of personal discrimination. Using interviews with 13 young women, we sought to understand the types of negative messages participants heard about “bi/sexuality” as well as the ways that they perceived or did not perceive themselves as having experienced discrimination related to their sexuality.

We found that family members and friends often described participants’ bisexuality as “disgusting,” “difficult to understand,” or “hot,” and participants described their own experiences with discrimination as “no big deal.” We use this analysis to build on previous research concerning microaggressions, sexual stigma, and denial of discrimination to discuss how familial, social, and political environments create a set of conditions in which later injustices are imagined as normative and inevitable.

Finally, we discuss the methodological dilemmas facing feminist psychologists who aim to analyze discrimination and the challenges in documenting individuals’ experiences of stigma, which may be imagined as no big deal to individuals, but are in fact unjust. It is imperative to develop strategies to recognize, document, and critically assess how injustice becomes all too normal for some and the role that feminist psychology can play in changing this.

McClelland, S. I. (2016) [pdf here]

Abstract

Marginalia is a term used to describe written notes or verbal comments spontaneously offered by participants over the course of a study. Although typically ignored, this unexpected form of data offers psychologists an opportunity to listen when participants “speak back” to the researcher. In this introduction to this special section on marginalia in Qualitative Psychology, I argue for recognizing marginalia as data. In addition, I discuss relevant research on marginalia in the social sciences and describe evidence for how marginalia offer an invaluable tool for researchers to examine their own assumptions about research design and data collection. The authors included in this special section describe their experiences with analyzing marginalia in studies using survey, interview, and participatory research methods. Each article discusses challenges the authors faced when thinking about marginalia. This involved shifting from thinking about marginalia as “noise” to thinking about marginalia as an important source of data. This special section on marginalia offers strategies that extend calls from feminist writers of color to recognize the margins as locations of political knowledge, a challenge to status quo assumptions, and critical spaces for knowledge production.

McClelland, S. I., & Holland, K. J. (2016) [pdf here]

Abstract

Comments left by participants in the margins of a survey are commonly ignored during data analysis. Rather than overlook these marginalia, we describe a qualitative analysis of the notes, underlines, and cross-outs left by participants in the margins of the Female Sexual Function Index (FSFI; Rosen et al., 2000). Participants who were diagnosed with late stage breast cancer had taken the FSFI as part of a larger multi-method quality of life study. In our analysis, we identify 3 categories to analyze the 136 instances of marginalia left next to FSFI items: clarifications, corrections, and noting items as “not applicable.” Using these marginalia as guidance, we developed a modified scoring procedure for the FSFI that accounted for those participants who marked items as “not applicable” in their marginalia but would have been dropped from analysis due to missing data. We offer guidelines for researchers interested in analyzing marginalia as a means to incorporate and amplify participant feedback in survey research design. This is especially important when even well-validated instruments are used to make, for example, clinical diagnoses and treatment decisions, but do not adequately account for participants’ lives. Studies of marginalia enable qualitatively derived insights to be effectively incorporated into survey methodology, enabling us to better attend to the ways participants communicate and share their lives with us over the course of any study.

Fahs, B., & McClelland, S. I. (2016) [pdf here]

Abstract

Attentive to the collision of sex and power, we add momentum to the ongoing development of the subfield of critical sexuality studies. We argue that this body of work is defined by its critical orientation toward the study of sexuality, along with a clear allegiance to critical modalities of thought, particularly feminist thought. Critical sexuality studies takes its cues from several other critical moments in related fields, including critical psychology, critical race theory, critical public health, and critical youth studies. Across these varied critical stances is a shared investment in examining how power and privilege operate, understanding the role of historical and epistemological violence in research, and generating new models and paradigms to guide empirical and theoretical research. With this guiding framework, we propose three central characteristics of critical sexuality studies: (a) conceptual analysis, with particular attention to how we define key terms and conceptually organize our research (e.g., attraction, sexually active, consent, agency, embodiment, sexual subjectivity); (b) attention to the material qualities of abject bodies, particularly bodies that are ignored, overlooked, or pushed out of bounds (e.g., viscous bodies, fat bodies, bodies in pain); and (c) heteronormativity and heterosexual privilege, particularly how assumptions about heterosexuality and heteronormativity circulate in sexuality research. Through these three critical practices, we argue that critical sexuality studies showcases how sex and power collide and recognizes (and tries to subvert) the various power imbalances that are deployed and replicated in sex research.

McClelland, S. I., & Holland, K. J. (2015) [pdf here]

Abstract

We examined how university leaders described what and who needed to change in order to increase the representation of female faculty in science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) departments. Thirty-one (28 men and 3 women) STEM departmental chairs and deans at a large, public university participated in semi-structured interviews. Data were examined using both qualitative and quantitative procedures. Analysis focused on participants’ descriptions of responsibility for changes related to gender equity. Using the distinction of high versus low responsibility, themes were examined for their qualitative characteristics as well as their frequency. Leaders who exhibited high personal responsibility most frequently saw themselves as needing to change and also named their male colleagues as concurrently responsible for diversity. Conversely, leaders who exhibited low personal responsibility most frequently described female faculty as responsible and described women’s attitudes and their “choice” to have a family as obstacles to gender diversity in STEM. We argue that the dimensions of high and low responsibility are useful additions to discussions of leadership, workplace diversity initiatives, and gender equity more broadly. To this end, we provide several methodological tools to examine these subtle, yet essential, aspects of how diversity and change efforts are imagined and discussed.

McClelland, S. I. (2014) [pdf here]

Virtual special issue on "Constructing Sexualities in Feminism & Psychology can be found here

Abstract

Not enough is understood about the role of gender norms and sexual stigma in shaping individuals’ definitions of sexual satisfaction. The current study aimed to investigate the heterogeneity of definitions of sexual satisfaction in a sample of young adults, ages 18–28 (M = 22.6; SD = 4.78). Forty US participants (50% females; 45% LGBTQ; 53% white) sorted 63 statements about sexual satisfaction using a Q methodology design (Watts and Stenner, 2005), followed by semi-structured interviews. This mixed methods procedure enabled both a systematic and in-depth examination of the dimensions participants prioritized when determining their sexual satisfaction. Analysis of participants’ Q sorts indicated four distinct perspectives on sexual satisfaction: emotional and masculine; relational and feminine; partner focused; and orgasm focused. These four factors were further explored using participants’ interview data. Findings indicated that individuals interpreted sexual satisfaction using several key dimensions not regularly included in survey research. Existing survey items do not regularly attend to the gendered and heteronormative components of sexual satisfaction appraisals and as a result, important interpretive patterns may be overlooked.

Frost, D. M., McClelland, S. I., Clark, J. B., & Boylan, E. A. (2014) [pdf here]

Abstract

In this chapter, we review issues central to the use of phenomenological research methods in the psychological study of sexuality. Phenomenological methods are characterized by close attention to the details of participants’ lived experience as well as an emphasis on participants’ interpretation of their experience. This group of methods is essential in psychological research on sexuality because it helps researchers to understand the phenomenon of sexuality as it is experienced in everyday life and under constant change. Beginning with a summary of the epistemological foundations of phenomenological research methods in psychology, we present an overview of several popular approaches to data collection and analysis that facilitate phenomenological investigations of sexuality. Classical foundations, future directions, limitations, advantages, and clinical and policy relevance are discussed via key exemplar studies of sexuality related phenomena using phenomenological research methods.

McClelland, S. I. (2012) [pdf here]

Abstract

Over the past 20 years, sexual quality of life has become of increasing interest to psychologists studying quality of life with ill and/or aging populations. As people are living longer with chronic illnesses, the maintenance of sexual health has become a topic of concern and an essential domain of overall quality of life (QoL; see Arrington, Cofrancesco, & Wu, 2004). This emerging body of research has undoubtedly helped to guide clinical interventions and to increase quality of life for patients and their intimate partners. However, questions remain as to whether definitions and operationalizations of sexual function commonly used in research settings are sufficient to describe the range and scope of sexual quality of life (SQoL) experienced by both men and women, especially those who are ill, recovering from illness, or living with a chronic illness. This chapter offers 10 suggestions to help guide researchers in this burgeoning area of study. The recommendations include measurement as well as research design considerations in order to help enrich researchers’ understanding of the psychological qualities of sexual quality of life as experienced across diverse populations who are coping with aging and/or conditions of illness, and perhaps treatment. [Google Books]

McClelland, S. I. (2011) [pdf here]

Abstract

ederal policies that guide clinical trial design exert an often unseen influence in people’s lives. Taking a closer look at the US Food and Drug Administration’s guidance in the field of female sexual dysfunction, this paper examines how sexual satisfaction is increasingly used to guide clinical interventions; however, questions remain about the social psychological qualities of this appraisal. The current mixed methods study pairs interview data with close ended measures of sexual satisfaction in order to examine the cognitive and interpersonal strategies individuals used when they were asked to assess their own sexual satisfaction ( N = 41). While researchers often assume that responses in self-report measures are reflections of an intra-individual reflective process, findings demonstrated that women and sexual minority men often reported on their partner’s sexual satisfaction instead of their own. Taking up the question of who is the “self” in self-reports of sexual satisfaction, this study explores the clinical, research, and policy implications of relying on sexual satisfaction as a meaningful indicator of change or well-being in an individual’s life.

McClelland, S. I., & Fine, M. (2008) [pdf here]

Abstract

In this essay, we theorize methods to study teen women’s sexual desires. Our title stems from a concern that young women’s desires come to be laminated in cellophane. We see layers of cellophane being produced by: a market economy that rushes to commodify young female bodies; sociopolitical, moral, and hetero-normative panics that obsess over young women’s sexualities; racist imagery and institutional practices that vilify the sexualities of women of color; and by schools increasingly kidnapped by the policy of teaching Abstinence-Only-Until-Marriage curricula in place of serious sexuality education (see Fine & McClelland, 2006; 2007). In this essay, we are particularly interested in methods to study sexual desires as they are narrated, embodied, and enacted by young women in this political context. Wrapped in a kind of collective discursive cellophane, we believe it may difficult for them to speak as their tongues are weighed down with dominant assumptions and panics, and similarly, our ears may be clogged with our own dominant [feminist] discourses for their desires. In this essay, we ask: How can critical feminist theories and methods account for the layers of discursive cellophane that instruct young women to be ashamed, guilty, provocative, hot, dissociated and/or regretful about their sexualities? How do we craft methods that acknowledge these political and discursive contexts – including the varied (yet limited) positions available to and imposed upon young women – and still manage to understand something about what it means to be a young woman living and developing sexually in the early decades of the 21st century?

McClelland, S. I., & Fine, M. (2008) [pdf here]

Abstract

Since 1982, more than US $1 billion have been spent through federally sponsored abstinence-only-until-marriage (AOUM) programs, including nearly $800 million between 2001 and 2006, during the presidency of George W. Bush. With this increased funding has come pressure to evaluate the impact of AOUM programs. In 1998, a federally funded evaluation of AOUM programming was commissioned to assess its impact on young people. Because the abstinence policies and the evaluation of their success derive from the federal government, the authors identify the troubling potential of "embedded science." Using a recent example of research in the field of abstinence-only education (Maynard et al., 2005), the authors identify a number of practices and consequences of embedding research science within existing public policy. They find that when evaluation research is overly embedded, it tends to be dominated by political ideologies, information is omitted, and critique is virtually absent.