I have a couple of things to say:

Ellexoh,
Your conclusion is based on the very limited sample of the SSN.  But I'd grant that it's true that to the extent the stories of any of the straight spouses of a gay/lesbian partner get told it'll be a divorce story; the statistics are that most MOMs end in divorce.  
 For the spouses of those who declare themselves to be trans, the stories that get told with more prominence are those of spouses who stay, even though again, most spouses do not.  Maybe people want to hear the stories of those who stay because it just seems too unbelievable that anyone would or could.  

  On the larger question of this study.
  Diwhahn: On academic standards, IRB protocols, etc.  I'm an academic.  A professor for over a quarter century.  I take all your assurances with a large grain of salt.  All the protocols, double-checks, and navel-gazing attempts to account for one's "positionality" (as if we researchers don't rationalize our blind spots out of existence) don't eliminate bias.  It's also true that it's not possible to fully eliminate bias.  So would-be participants have to assess what steps are being taken and assess for themselves whether they believe them to be sufficient to be willing to participate and take the chance they won't feel victimized or their stories told to support positions either overt or disguised/unrecognized that will feel like violations of objectivity and betrayal on the part of the researcher.  
   My field long ago confronted the problem of identity politics and positionality in research and teaching.  The mature thinking is that study from all positions is valuable and even necessary.  A variety of perspectives enriches the dialogue, but all have both limitations and value.  Brits study American literature, and tell us something we Americans are less likely to be able to see.  Americans study British history, with the same effect.  And so on. 
    So for me, on this question of participation, it's a matter of weighing things: do I believe that an academic study carried out in this field (which will categorize "communication" along accepted norms of the field, which includes such ideas as "disclosers" and "receivers" of "information," which reflects the following ideas that 1) communication is accurately characterized as "information"; 2) "information" is transmitted through "disclosers" and "receivers," rather than it being a more imbricated and complicated process; 3) communication is best characterized and can be studied only as "information" transmitted through verbal utterance; 4) that we understand those utterances to be valid, reflecting self-reflective truths on the part of those uttering them), even given its inevitable limitations, at least allows for our stories and experiences to be represented in the academic literature, which gives them a presence on which other researchers can then follow up.  
  After my decades as an academic, I'm pretty skeptical about academic research.  I'm also generally skeptical that researchers can know or overcome or can trust their attempts to eliminate their biases.  I'm specifically suspicious of that ability in someone who is the homosexual partner in a MOM wanting to study the straight spouse, based not only on my experience as a straight spouse but of reading the stories of other straight spouses--minimizing and blameshifting are common tactics we've observed in our spouses.   If the study includes the wives of those men who declare themselves to be transgendered and now consider themselves lesbian, I'll have additional questions I'll want answered about how transness itself will be characterized by the researcher before I could decide to participate.
   If any of us agrees to this research, we should be aware that we are not being contacted by someone who wants to be our advocate or even just to tell our stories. We should understand that she's a graduate student out to prove herself as a researcher and also hoping to make both a contribution to her field and a reputation for herself in that field, and that we, as the understudied, represent an opportunity for her.  We should further understand that the outlines of the field will determine how our "data" (our answers or stories) will be received and shaped, understood, and represented.  
   

Last edited by OutofHisCloset (October 26, 2018 5:33 pm)

Thanks, Lake Breeze,
 I left some stuff out, of course.  Namely: "information" is an inadequate way to measure communication.  Most "information" is "delivered" in ways that are both protective of the self and self-interested (in that the speaker wants something, either from the other person or in service to an idea of the self).  And much "information" itself comes not as "text" (the overt speech) but as "subtext" (the unspoken assumptions governing the relationship between the two speakers, or underlying the context in which the speech takes place, or in a power dynamic that the speech addresses. etc).  

delete

Last edited by Lynne (February 3, 2019 1:17 pm)

No need to get defensive. 
   I was merely pointing out that one can't draw a broader conclusion based on what is seen on the SSN.  I wasn't saying anything about your own experience or elevating my experience over yours. 
   As for the research/researcher's query, there were a number of questions and objections raised about the study and the researcher's possible bias by others and I thought that as an academic who knows something about the process of getting a PhD, how academic research is conducted, and how a field's conventions shape research questions and conclusions that I might have some useful light to shed on the situation.  
  

Last edited by OutofHisCloset (October 26, 2018 5:25 pm)

So I wonder, Phoenix, who are you going to choose to be the voice of that podcast?  YazPistachio is wavering as her spouse alters their course, Ellexoh's position changes as her financial dependence lessens, and Brassy Hub is devastated but believes there is no alternative to his situation.