Research and Scholarship Days

Sarah Lappin & Maddox Nelles

More Than Medicine: Psychosocial and Peer-based Approaches to Understanding and Affirming Transgender Identity in Children and Youth

Program: Child Studies and Social Work

Supervisor: Gio Dolecore

On January 31, Alberta Premier Danielle Smith announced her government's intentions to introduce legislation that would drastically limit gender-affirming care for transgender youth. 

Mount Royal students Sarah Lappin and Maddox Nelles were deep into a project exploring a historical timeline of the diagnosis of gender dysphoria when the announcement was made. 

The pair immediately shifted gears into a new project examining and collecting scholarly evidence arguing why gender-affirming care should be supported, specifically focusing on psychosocial approaches that did not include medical care. 

 That meant specifically examining social aspects of gender-affirming care, such as letting people use their preferred name and pronouns or having places of support online. 

Lappin and Nelles felt this was a gap in the Canadian context that should be explored, especially in light of these recent developments. 

Additionally, it was a topic that hit close to home for both of them. “As both members of the LGBTQ+ community and people who know transgender individuals, it was important to get some research out there and show, in the context of this proposed legislation in Alberta, how dangerous it could be for transgender people,” Nelles says. 

Lappin continues, “It was clear to me that this proposed legislation was not rooted in evidence or research. There is a total absence of it being mentioned, which is why I wanted to see the research myself.” The importance of this topic, especially within the Alberta context as harmful legislation looms over the province, meant that communicating their findings was a priority for the pair. 

They set their sights on Research and Scholarship Days to disseminate their research. However, with the announcement being made on January 31 and Research and Scholarship Days starting in late March, it meant there would be a tight turnaround for this project. 

A two-month timeframe meant a lot of work needed to be done. Lappin and Nelles decided to focus on producing a literature review, finding evidence through a semi-structured search strategy. The work was realistic within their timeframe and could still produce insights and evidence for gender-affirming care that could be easily disseminated. 

They searched through ten scholarly databases, scanning titles and abstracts for works that matched their search criteria, eventually gathering a pool of evidence that supported the use of gender-affirming care. 

It was a tall task. Thankfully for Lappin, research was not a process she was unfamiliar with, having been immersed in research since high school. Lappin’s experiences include working with Alberta Health Services as a patient advisor and involvement in research projects with the University of Alberta and Brock University. “I was trained in community-based participatory research and participatory action research…As a young person who has accessed mental health services and had lived experiences with mental health, I worked with researchers to inform their research,” Lappin says. This included helping with interview questions, writing, and analyzing data, which was a boon for her Research and Scholarship Days efforts. 

Nelles notes that this process will be invaluable as he goes through the rest of his program and eventually into graduate school. However, being able to research a topic he was invested in was the most valuable part of the experience. “I think the most important part for me was to have the support to research an issue that really matters to me…Having the support to do what we are supposed to do as social workers. Supporting a marginalized community is an important professional and personal opportunity,” Nelles says. 

Even though Research and Scholarship Days are over, Lappin and Nelles are still committed to spreading the word about their research and communicating it to Albertans.  

Kobe Tulloch, Julie Patton & Connor Balsillie

Is Home Here?

Program: Journalism & Digital Media

Supervisor: Patti Edgar

On September 16, 2023, Calgary City Council approved the city’s housing strategy dubbed Home is Here. A proposed plan to help deal with the ongoing housing crisis. The plan outlines 98 action items that will work to achieve the plan's five desired outcomes. 

The city released a large PDF document outlining the plan, but for Mount Royal journalism students Kobe Tulloch, Julie Patton and Connor Balsillie, that wasn’t enough. For such a vital issue that affects everyone in the city, they wanted to break down the plan and make it more digestible for the everyday Calgarian.

This resulted in their multimedia project titled Is Home Here? consisting of a multimedia website featuring interviews with affected sources representing several sides of the housing crisis, a video explainer, and infographics. The objective is to clearly explain to Calgarians how the plan will affect them and hopefully make the documents released by the city more comprehensible and the jargon easier to parse.

The group explored three perspectives on the housing crisis: The renter, the homeowner, and the unhoused. The group wanted to give a voice to these perspectives and let other Calgarians see the crisis from multiple angles.

As people who have lived experiences with the housing crisis, the proposed plan was the catalyst that prompted the group to take up this research project, as Tulloch and Balsillie explain. “I [Tulloch] rent in Calgary, and that is getting harder and harder. I’m one of many students who have heard conceptually about the city’s housing crisis and that a plan had been announced to deal with it.”

Balsillie continues by saying, “I thought it would be a good time to work on a project about housing...I could use my position as someone who didn’t know that much about housing and use that to my advantage to help everyday Calgarians.”

For the fourth-year journalism students, this was the perfect opportunity to test their creative talents and research skills. Everyone focused on their area of interest for creating the website, with Julie handling the writing, Connor working on infographics, and Kobe designing the layout of the website itself.

It also involved extensive hands-on experience, with each group member conducting interviews and attending in-person info sessions organized by the city. Despite the excellent group dynamic, this on-the-ground experience still caused some anxiety and frustration.

Patton says that she set up the interviews and that “I’ve never had so much trouble finding people before. People did not want to talk about this. It was a lot of reaching out to someone, and then they’d pass me to someone else, and it was a lot of back and forth repeating that. It took a lot of time, but it brought us to some amazing people.” The struggle to find sources was contrasted by their experiences at the city info sessions, where people were eager to speak with them on this topic

Ultimately, the group found through this hunt and the info sessions that this was a topic Calgarians wanted to have their voices heard on. Since the completion of the Is Home Here? website, frustrations and controversy have continued to flare as the city considers blanket rezoning for Calgary, making this research project even more timely.

While the three journalism students wanted to spread the word about this important topic, they also wanted to share this with the Mount Royal community. Patton notes that it was always their goal to present at Research and Scholarship Days, especially with how this issue impacts students.

Overall, the group felt it was a rewarding experience, with Balsillie saying, “Talking to citizens, ordinary Calgarians, and talking about their concerns was really enjoyable. I felt fulfilled and satisfied after doing that.” While creating a memorable presentation, the project also provided a resource for Calgarians navigating this complicated issue.

McKenzie Thompson

Sexually exploited youth in care: An integrative review of treatment models and policies

Program: Criminal Justice

Supervisor: Scharie Tavcer

Fourth-year criminal justice student McKenzie Thompson had always had a clear idea of the direction she wanted her university career to take. “Since starting school, I knew I wanted to go into honours, and I initially wanted to look at perceptions of the decriminalization of drugs. That was always my idea,” Thompson says.

That changed when she started working at a youth group home last summer, and her perspective shifted. Seeing and working with vulnerable youth living through difficult situations changed the direction of her research interests, with Thompson saying, “I wanted to look at the problems these youth face, especially because I worked in it. I knew what was going on, how youth felt, and how they were vulnerable.” That led to her project examining sexually exploited youth living in group homes and what treatment models and policies were currently in use.

The research project primarily consisted of an integrative literature review focusing specifically on the Canadian context. Thompson aimed to determine why youth in group homes were more vulnerable to sexual exploitation and what preventative methods group homes could utilize to reduce risk factors.

Interaction with strangers online was identified as one of the biggest factors in youth exploitation, which aligned with her own experiences working in a group home. “We can’t patrol everything youth participate in online 100 per cent. Things can slip through the cracks,” Thompson says. Educating youth in group homes about online interaction and how to spot exploitative behaviour is a big preventative measure.

Furthermore, through the literature review, Thompson determined that trauma-informed care was the most effective measure to reduce risk factors of exploitation. Supportive environments that build trust and allow youth to tell their stories in safe spaces at their own pace was proven to be an effective method of care in Canadian youth group homes.

Through these findings, Thompson hopes her research will be built upon further with stakeholder interviews, both with workers in youth group homes and the youth who live there. Building upon this researcher would ideally inform policy decisions at high levels.

Thompson also notes that this doesn’t just affect youth in group homes. Exploitation of youth through the internet and online interactions can affect anyone. Education in schools would be an important step for youth to develop the skills to recognize exploitative behaviour. This again ties into the importance of building upon this research and informing policymakers.

While this was a topic Thompson was invested in and passionate about, that didn’t make the research process any less intimidating. “This was my first time ever working on a project this big, so it was really daunting going into it,” Thompson says. Support from resources in the library proved invaluable, and the actual act of research is something Thompson says improved her education immensely. “I was unaware of this entire process, and it really helped my writing. Even as a fourth-year student, I thought I knew everything about APA, and I didn’t. I needed to review my work a lot.”

Thompson will continue working with youth as she moves beyond university, continuing to work in a group home this coming summer with Heritage Family Services.