Jacqui Gabb

The Open University, Social Policy and Criminology, Faculty Member

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Jacqui Gabb is Professor of Sociology and Intimacy at The Open University. She holds a PhD in Women’s Studies, University of York, UK. Interests centre on interdisciplinary approaches for researching and theorizing intimacy, sexuality and family life. She has completed RCUK-funded projects on lesbian parenthood, intimacy and sexuality in families, and post-divorce fatherhood. She has published widely in fields of sexuality and family studies. Academic publications include Couple Relationships in the 21st Century (Palgrave, 2015) and Researching Intimacy in Families (Palgrave, 2008). Findings from her recent study on long-term couple relationships www.EnduringLove.co.uk have also been published in a self-help handbook The Secrets of Enduring Love (Penguin, Random House, 2016) and in collaboration with Brook have been ‘translated’ into online relationship resources for young people and an eLearning pack for teachers https://www.brook.org.uk/your-life/category/relationships

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Cirus Rinaldi

Università degli Studi di Palermo

Marc Champagne

Kwantlen Polytechnic University

David Seamon

Kansas State University

Fırat Genç

Istanbul Bilgi University

Shilpa Phadke

Tata Institute of Social Sciences

Snezana Zhana Vrangalova

New York University

Francisco Vazquez-Garcia

Universidad de Cadiz

Rosalind Gill

Goldsmiths, University of London

Paola Bacchetta

University of California, Berkeley

Amy C. Moors

Chapman University

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Papers by Jacqui Gabb

Relationship Work and Older Adults: The Role of Gender in Negotiating Enduring Coupledom

Relationship Quality Scale

PsycTESTS Dataset, 2018

To have and to hold? The relationality of emotions and couples' relationships in twenty-first-century Britain

Routledge eBooks, Oct 31, 2019

Qualitative Research

The SAGE Encyclopedia of LGBTQ Studies

For guidance on citations see FAQs.

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Paired Evaluation Preliminary Report from the Pilot Evaluation of the Paired App

The Open University/The University of Brighton, Mar 15, 2021

and in the delivery of psychological interventions (Richards & Richardson, 2012). For relationshi... more and in the delivery of psychological interventions (Richards & Richardson, 2012). For relationship support, these technologies may be effective in building habit formation through cues, routines, and rewards (Danaher, Nyholm, & Earp, 2018). They may also enable self-monitoring, which is crucial to raising awareness of a person's own behaviours and emotions, and thus facilitates self-management of these behaviours and emotions (Bandura, 1998). However, many health and well-being apps are not based on reliable research evidence or theory, nor are they rigorously evaluated. Often, the only indication of an app's quality is its (potentially unreliable) 'user reviews'.

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Enduring Love? Couple Relationships in the 21st Century, Survey Findings Report

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‘I Could Eat My Baby to Bits’; passion and desire in lesbian mother–children love

Gender, Place & Culture, 2004

Motherchildren love and adultsexual love tend to be differentiated by the absence/presence of p... more

The Secrets of Enduring Love: How to make relationships last

The Secrets of Enduring Love is the only relationship self-help book to be based on an extensive ... more The Secrets of Enduring Love is the only relationship self-help book to be based on an extensive survey and interview study with people in long-term relationships. The book focuses on what we know about what they actually do to sustain their relationships. It’s illustrated with quotes and examples from the research throughout, as well as including activities from it to help readers to reflect on their own relationships and to try things out. One of the key messages from the research is that different things work for different people, and at different times in the relationship. For this reason the book focuses on the diversity of practices that readers might bring into their own relationships; assisting them to recognise the small things which they may be already doing but which ordinarily go by unnoticed, and offering them a helping hand to find out what works best for them.

Measuring Relationship Quality in an International Study

Research on Social Work Practice, 2016

Objective: This study reports on the operationalization and testing of the newly developed Relati... more Objective: This study reports on the operationalization and testing of the newly developed Relationship Quality (RQ) scale, designed to assess an individual’s perception of his or her RQ in their current partnership. Methods: Data were generated through extended sampling from an original U.K.-based research project, Enduring Love? Couple relationships in the 21st century. This mixed methods study was designed to investigate how couples experience, understand, and sustain their long-term relationships. This article utilizes the cross-sectional, community sample ( N = 8,132) from this combined data set, drawn primarily from the United Kingdom, United States, and Australia. A two-part approach to scale development was employed. An initial 15-item pool was subjected to exploratory factor analysis leading into confirmatory factor analysis using structural equation modeling. Results: The final 9-item scale evidenced convergent construct validity and known-groups validity along with strong...

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To have and to hold?

Working with group-level data in phenomenological research: a modified visual matrix method

Qualitative Research in Psychology, Aug 1, 2018

A common criticism of phenomenological methods has been that there is singular focus on individua... more A common criticism of phenomenological methods has been that there is singular focus on individual experience at the cost of broader group level phenomena. In contrast, psychoanalytically informed psychosocial methods have continued to develop novel ways of exploring group level material. A notable recent methodology is the visual matrix method (Froggett, Manley & Roy, 2014), which is an innovative methodological development that draws on ideas from social dreaming (Lawrence, 2003, 2005). In this article, we describe the development and application of a group level existentialphenomenological method, inspired by the visual matrix method. In collaboration with a filmmaker we produced a film series designed to engage the public with research findings on 'enduring love'. The viewing experience was explored using a modified version of the visual matrix method. We discuss the value of this methodological development for research within the phenomenological tradition as well as potential tensions.

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Imag (in) ing the queer lesbian family

... However even "innocent" family snapshots that appear quite conservative to us, may ... more

Unsettling lesbian motherhood: Critical reflections over a generation (1990–2015)

Sexualities, Sep 12, 2017

For guidance on citations see FAQs.

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Victoria Climbié Inquiry Data Corpus Project: using the Delphi method in multidisciplinary child protection research

British Journal of Social Work, 2006

Jacqui Gabb is Staff Tutor, Lecturer in Sociology at the Open University in Leeds and has carried... more

Relationship Work

Couple Relationships in the 21st Century

Qualitative Research on LGBTQ-Parent Families

Qualitative research on LGBTQ-parent families and queer individuals and families of all kinds has... more Qualitative research on LGBTQ-parent families and queer individuals and families of all kinds has burgeoned, to include narratives, interviews, diaries, emotion maps, participatory action research, and visual and performative methods—individually or in combination. In this chapter, we examine a range of qualitative methods, particularly from the lens of a qualitative multiple methods approach developed by Jacqui Gabb. We also address conceptual, theoretical, intersectional, and methodological tensions that remain or have emerged regarding how qualitative LGBTQ-parent family research is conducted, to what ends, and how it should be represented in publication, for researchers, for practitioners, and for participants themselves. Our goal is to show that qualitative LGBTQ-parent family research has come of age: a great deal of exciting research is appearing around the globe, and yet, this area also faces numerous challenges to retaining its cutting edge nature. Finally, we combine new c...

How can we learn from an Inquiry into the death of a child

The Laming Inquiry into the death in the UK of eight year old Victoria Climbie was not simply a r... more The Laming Inquiry into the death in the UK of eight year old Victoria Climbie was not simply a review of failings in a single case of child abuse. Reporting to both the Home Office and the Department of Health, the Laming Report (2003) of the Inquiry set in motion a major re-evaluation of the child protection system in England and Wales. Its recommendations set the direction for major changes in organisation, legislation, policy and practice, as proposed in the British Government’s Green Paper ‘Every Child Matters’. The Inquiry was also significant because, for the first time, evidence presented to the Inquiry team was immediately available to the public via a website This paper reports on the development of the Victoria Climbie Inquiry Project at the University of Huddersfield which is working with the material on this website - in particular the cross examinations of witnesses - to develop a data corpus. The data consists of the detailed examination of fieldworkers, managers and ...

Reflections on my colleague, friend and collaborator-in-cake-eating David Morgan

The Affect of Methods

Researching Intimacy in Families, 2008

Researching Families and Childhood

Researching Intimacy in Families, 2008

In this chapter I set the scene by outlining the emergent fields of family studies and childhood ... more In this chapter I set the scene by outlining the emergent fields of family studies and childhood research. I explore how these two interlinked areas have developed and identify some of the key constitutive issues which shape the respective fields. In just one chapter it is not possible to undertake an exhaustive review of all significant sociologically informed family and childhood studies research, let alone incorporate other perspectives, for example those that have shaped psychological understandings of parent-child relationships (see Hollway 2006) and cross-cultural kinship formations (see Carsten 2004). Thus my aim is more modest: to outline significant sociological approaches and interventions in family and childhood research inquiry. In the context of this book, this is important for two reasons. First, identifying who or what constitutes family shapes the scope for subsequent analysis of the patterning of family intimacy and the generational dynamic of parent-child relationships. Second, how families and childhood are characterised has affected the approaches that researchers adopt. For example, framed as a functional reproductive unit, the research lens tends not to look beyond the boundaries of ‘the family’. If families are envisaged as relationships materialised through sets of practices rather than as a consequence of fixed social categories (mother, father, sibling, etc.), then research is likely to include analysis of the everyday.

Relationship Work and Older Adults: The Role of Gender in Negotiating Enduring Coupledom

Relationship Quality Scale

PsycTESTS Dataset, 2018

To have and to hold? The relationality of emotions and couples' relationships in twenty-first-century Britain

Routledge eBooks, Oct 31, 2019

Qualitative Research

The SAGE Encyclopedia of LGBTQ Studies

For guidance on citations see FAQs.

Download

Paired Evaluation Preliminary Report from the Pilot Evaluation of the Paired App

The Open University/The University of Brighton, Mar 15, 2021

Download

Enduring Love? Couple Relationships in the 21st Century, Survey Findings Report

Download

‘I Could Eat My Baby to Bits’; passion and desire in lesbian mother–children love

Gender, Place & Culture, 2004

Motherchildren love and adultsexual love tend to be differentiated by the absence/presence of p... more

The Secrets of Enduring Love: How to make relationships last

Measuring Relationship Quality in an International Study

Research on Social Work Practice, 2016

Download

To have and to hold?

Working with group-level data in phenomenological research: a modified visual matrix method

Qualitative Research in Psychology, Aug 1, 2018

Download

Imag (in) ing the queer lesbian family

... However even "innocent" family snapshots that appear quite conservative to us, may ... more

Unsettling lesbian motherhood: Critical reflections over a generation (1990–2015)

Sexualities, Sep 12, 2017

For guidance on citations see FAQs.

Download

Victoria Climbié Inquiry Data Corpus Project: using the Delphi method in multidisciplinary child protection research

British Journal of Social Work, 2006

Jacqui Gabb is Staff Tutor, Lecturer in Sociology at the Open University in Leeds and has carried... more

Relationship Work

Couple Relationships in the 21st Century

Qualitative Research on LGBTQ-Parent Families

How can we learn from an Inquiry into the death of a child

Reflections on my colleague, friend and collaborator-in-cake-eating David Morgan

The Affect of Methods

Researching Intimacy in Families, 2008

Researching Families and Childhood

Researching Intimacy in Families, 2008

Couple Relationships in the 21st Century. Research, policy, practice

This book presents an engaging account of love, intimacy and personal life in contemporary Wester... more This book presents an engaging account of love, intimacy and personal life in contemporary Western society. The authors draw on rich qualitative and large-scale survey data to explore how couples communicate with each other, negotiate the pressures and pleasures of parenthood, and the vagaries of sexual desire and intimacy across life course. Focusing on ‘the everyday’, Couple Relationships in the 21st Century unpicks the ordinary and often mundane relationship work that goes into sustaining a relationship over time, breaking down the dichotomy between enduring relationships of quality and good enough or endured relationships. It contests the separation of couples into distinct relationship types – defined through age, parenthood or sexuality. Looking through the lens of relationship practices it is clear that there is no ‘normal couple’: couples are what couples do.

Researching Intimacy in Families

An incisive engagement with the subject of intimacy and interpersonal relationships and the metho... more

The Secrets of Enduring Love

by Meg-John Barker and Jacqui Gabb

The Secrets of Enduring Love focuses on what couples actually do to maintain, nurture and nourish... more The Secrets of Enduring Love focuses on what couples actually do to maintain, nurture and nourish their relationships. The reader will be taken on a journey through different ways of doing relationships, focusing on the key themes which came out of the research: everyday acts of kindness and appreciation; the importance of home; communication and conflict management; sex and intimacy; incorporating others into the relationship (children, pets, friends, hobbies); and telling your own love story.

One of the key messages from the research is that different things work for different people, and at different times in the relationship. For this reason the book focuses on the differnt practices that we might bring into our own relationships, helping us to recognise the small things which we may be already doing but which ordinarily go by unnoticed, and offering a helping hand to find out what works best for us.

Read more at https://www.penguin.co.uk/books/1109805/the-secrets-of-enduring-love/#SITgpkRMuuTWfzA9.99

Sexualities Special Issue - Editorial Introduction: Queer Kinship and Relationships

by Agata Stasinska and Jacqui Gabb

Editorial introduction to Special Issue of Sexualities journal on Queer Kinship and Relationships

Jacqui Gabb

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