There is no need to apologize, however thank you. Your response is much appreciated.
I can be an exacting human being and I am terribly protective about any kind of clinical research or survey.
You used the terms 'respondent/human subject'. One of the things we fought for during my time as a health care activist was to never see the term 'human subject'. The term is dehumanizing. Folks who participant are not subjects, they are volunteers. I am glad to see that the term subject was not used in your IFC document. All the IFC documents I wrote or reviewed had to use the term participant or volunteer....never human subject. It is unfortunate that message seems to have never made it out of HIV/AIDS research.
I don't know if you are familiar with the Gay & Lesbian Medical Association (
www.glma.org). They have a project called the Lesbian Health Fund that gives grants to folks who want to research lesbian health.
Again, thanks for your response and I wish you the best of luck in your dissertation. Hopefully, defending your dissertation will be a little easier based on the input of folks from this site.
edited to add: heated debate is a good thing......