Nikki Hayfield

University of the West of England (UWE), Bristol

This research aimed to explore (predominantly heterosexual) students’ perceptions of sexuality and appearance. A short qualitative survey, which contained questions about the ‘typical appearance’ of lesbians, gay men, bisexual and heterosexual people, was completed by 36 university students. Previous research on dress and appearance in relation to...

A number of feminist scholars have argued that dress and appearance can be used to critique the dominant culture and explore alternative subjectivities. Research on non-heterosexual visual identities has explored the role that appearance and clothing practices can play in the construction of individual identities and collective communities. However...

Drawing on interviews with 20 self-identified bisexual women, this paper contributes to the limited psychological literature on bisexual women by exploring their experiences of social marginalisation. These (mainly white and middle class) British bisexual women reported that they did not feel at home in either lesbian or lesbian, gay, bisexual and...

This article reports a feminist analysis of interview data with 10 British women, in which they discuss sex and affection in their heterosexual relationships. We explore the popular cultural notion that women lack sexual desire and are more concerned with love and affection. Feminist research has highlighted how in mainstream cultural discourses, m...

In this article, we reflect on the concept of the insider and the outsider in qualitative research. We draw on our different experiences of conducting research with lesbian and bisexual women, using our PhD research projects as case studies to consider our similarities to and differences from our research participants. We highlight the impact that...

As the use of storytelling and doll play approaches 100 years in psychological research and clinical practice, this volume showcases narrative story completion methodologies (NSCM), a versatile research approach that uses story stems, dolls, and other visual methods to uncover our inner worlds, reveal social discourses, and communicate complex or d...

The Therapists as Research-informed Practitioners (TRP) is a research group aiming to enhance research training for counsellors, psychotherapists, and counselling psychologists. It provides learning and professional development events, supporting research and best-practice developments, and making policy recommendations to promote effective and sus...

In recent years, there has been increased cultural interest in perimenopause and menopause. The importance of peri/menopause in many women's lives makes this topic particularly pertinent for feminist psychologists. Some feminist scholars have acknowledged both physical and psychological factors as important aspects of women's experiences within the...

Please note that this article is available from the journal website via Open Access: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/14681994.2023.2293766 Abstract Female sexual pain (FSP) occurs within a relational context, yet little is known about partners’ experiences. We explored 26 men’s understandings and experiences of FSP within their differ...

Please note that this article is available from the journal website via Open Access: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/10894160.2024.2279458

This paper is Open Access: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0192513X231194298 Civil partnerships first became available to mixed-sex couples in England and Wales in December 2019. To date, there has been no research exploring the perspectives of mixed-sex couples who choose to become civil partners. We interviewed 21 people, as individuals...

Civil partnerships were extended to mixed-sex couples in England and Wales at the end of 2019, shortly followed by Northern Ireland (2020) and Scotland (2021). Since then, thousands of mixed-sex couples have entered a civil partnership. While civil partnerships were favoured by politicians as an alternative to legal rights for cohabitants, we know...

This textbook aims to support counsellors, psychotherapists, and counselling psychologists to develop a creative research-informed practice. Following from the authors' earlier title Enjoying Research, the book covers qualitative, quantitative, pluralistic, and mixed methods approaches with a special focus on diversity, researcher support and innov...

This chapter presents the essentials of conceptualising, designing and doing reflexive Thematic Analysis (TA), in counselling and psychotherapy. The authors contextualise TA as a family of methods, with some quite radically different approaches, ranging theoretically from ‘scientifically descriptive’ to ‘artfully interpretative’. After outlining ke...

Representations of peri/menopause are influential in relation to how peri/menopause is understood and how peri/menopausal women are perceived, both of which have important implications for health and wellbeing. In this paper, we report results from a story completion study with 102 undergraduate psychology students. Participants were invited to wri...

This article is organised into sections that explore three key themes. The first is overarching and cuts across the literature, where within recent bisexuality research there has been increased inclusion of those whose identities are defined by attraction to multiple genders (e.g., pansexual, queer, and others). This has sometimes been in the form...

In this paper, we report on our survey research which sought to explore how pansexual and panromantic people experience and understand their identities. Eighty participants, mainly in the U.K., were recruited via social media and internet forums. Thematic analysis resulted in the development of two key themes. In The label depends on the context: I...

Feminist theorists have often been critical of marriage as an oppressive and patriarchal institution. In the 2000s, debates around the proposed introduction of same-sex civil partnership and marriage centred on recognising rights versus resisting regulation. In December 2019, different-sex civil partnerships became available as a form of relationsh...

This chapter is part of an open access book: https://www.taylorfrancis.com/books/bisexuality-europe-emiel-maliepaard-renate-baumgartner/e/10.4324/9780367809881?refId=6b4573a7-d5ef-438c-802b-30daac1781b2

This chapter provides a critical review of the inter-disciplinary research on voluntary childlessness, examining some of the problematic assumptions that underpin the literature and the image of the childfree woman that emerges as a result. It is not intended as a comprehensive overview of this literature, but rather a feminist engagement with the...

Prior research has found that asexual people may fantasise or participate in activities typically conceptualised within mainstream society as ‘sexual’. These behaviours may be considered paradoxical when an asexual person is conceptualised as someone who does not experience sexual attraction or desire. This research aimed to explore how kinks and f...

In 2006, psychologists Virginia Braun and Victoria Clarke published a paper entitled Using thematic analysis in psychology in Qualitative Research in Psychology. The paper sought to provide guidance, for psychology colleagues and students, on the conceptualisation, considerations and practice of thematic analysis (TA). Their paper proved unexpected...

Feminist scholars have identified a “motherhood imperative” in Western cultures, where heterosexual women are understood to both want, and have, children. However, social shifts have resulted in a decrease in pronatalism as well as an increase in social recognition of the parenting desires of same-sex parents. Despite a resurgence of interest in ch...

This chapter maps the terrain of thematic analysis (TA), a method for capturing patterns (“themes”) across qualitative datasets. We identify key concepts and different orientations and practices, illustrating why TA is often better understood as an umbrella term, used for sometimes quite different approaches, than a single qualitative analytic appr...

This chapter introduces the story completion (SC) method of collecting qualitative data, a novel technique that offers exciting potential to the qualitative researcher. SC involves a researcher writing a story “stem” or “cue” – or, more simply put, the start of a story, usually an opening sentence or two – and asking the participants to complete or...

FULL TEXT NOT AVAILABLE, PLEASE DO NOT REQUEST, ANY REQUESTS WILL BE DECLINED This chapter maps the terrain of thematic analysis (TA), a method for capturing patterns ("themes") across qualitative datasets. We identify key concepts and different orientations and practices, illustrating why TA is often better understood as an umbrella term, used fo...

Virginia Braun, Victoria Clarke, Hannah Frith, Nikki Hayfield, Helen Malson, Naomi Moller, and Iduna Shah-Beckley came together at the University of the West of England (UWE) in July 2017 to discuss and share their enthusiasm for the story completion method. Virginia nominally “led” the discussion to keep us on track. This is a transcript of the di...

Our special issue “New Frontiers of Family: LGBTQ People Pushing Back the Boundaries of Family” has brought together six exciting articles that each reconceptualize families formed by lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans, and queer (LGBTQ) people beyond the Standard North American Family model (SNAF; Smith, 1993). The SNAF has been the dominant ideologica...

Evidence suggests that most lesbians remain childless, but little is known about the childfree lesbian experience. The current study qualitatively explores the experiences of five childfree lesbians. The results show that even for a group for which childlessness is arguably still presumed, it remains socially difficult to articulate a desire to rem...

*Online first now available: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/14780887.2018.1536390 Abstract: This study sought to develop knowledge about understandings of sexuality and appearance, by using a story completion task combined with an innovative visual methodology. Fifty-four (mainly female) participants were randomly assigned to comple...

Many negative portrayals of bisexuality within Western culture relate to relationships, yet only a small body of research has explored bisexual people’s experiences of their bisexual identity within their partner relationships, particularly within the wider cultural context of binegativity. Twenty qualitative interviews were conducted with bisexual...

Body image pressures for heterosexual women are well established. However, lesbian body image is less well understood, while bisexual women have largely been overlooked within the psychological literature. Further, women's investment in 'traditional' appearance practices associated with femininity are underexplored. The current study explored diffe...

In her Doctoral studies, she explores how bisexuality - which is persistently culturally associated with temporariness, multiple partners and promiscuity - fits, fights and expands the normative cultural understandings of relationships. Her research specifically examines how a sample of Finnish bisexual women and their (ex-)partners of various gend...

This chapter introduces the story completion (SC) method of collecting qualitative data, a novel technique that offers intriguing potential to the qualitative researcher. Since the method is new to qualitative research, it has fewer published research studies than some of the other methods covered in this book. For this reason, the chapter aims not...

Body image pressures for heterosexual women are well established. However, lesbian body image is less well understood, while bisexual women have largely been overlooked with the psychological literature. Further, women's investment in 'traditional' appearance practices associated with femininity are under explored. The current study explored differ...

Most mainstream appearance psychology has been located within health psychology and has focused on how appearance can become a concern for those with congenital or acquired visible differences or ?disfigurements.? Other appearance research has focused on body image and appearance in relation to gender and sexuality from both mainstream and critical...

Please see a pre-publication proof on the UWE repository: http://eprints.uwe.ac.uk/24794/

This chapter provides an introduction to thematic analysis (TA). We highlight the unique features of TA, including its flexibility, and its status as a technique that can be used within a wide variety of approaches to qualitative research. We then provide a detailed description of doing TA, using Virginia Braun and Victoria Clarke’s six-phase appro...

The term ‘bisexual’ is generally used in minority Western cultures to refer to an individual who experiences sexual attraction to more than one gender - or whose attractions are based on characteristics other than gender (e.g. build or eye colour). As we will show in this chapter, psychology is deeply implicated in the construction of current cultu...

We live in a society in which messages associating physical attractiveness with success and happiness are pervasive. There is an epidemic of appearance concerns amongst teenagers and adults in westernised countries and body image dissatisfaction is now considered normative. Large numbers of people experience negative impacts on wellbeing and, for m...

This paper provides a review of the psychological literature on LGBT appearance and embodiment. Research on ‘outsider’ perceptions of LGBT appearance and embodiment has focused on the links between perceptions of physical attractiveness and homosexuality, and physical attractiveness and transsexuality, and on the detection of homosexuality from vis...

We live in a society in which messages associating physical attractiveness with success and happiness are pervasive. There is an epidemic of appearance concerns amongst teenagers and adults in westernised countries and body image dissatisfaction is now considered normative. Large numbers of people experience negative impacts on wellbeing and, for m...

This article reports on a conversation between 12 lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) psychologists at the first international LGBT Psychology Summer Institute at the University of Michigan in August 2009. Participants discuss how their work in LGBT psychology is affected by national policy, funding and academic contexts and the transnati...