Dev Log 1: Researching & Report Writing

Introduction

I wrote a report on conversion therapy and it's current existence within Canada. 

If you stumbled across this by clicking through most recently posted dev logs here on itch, you may be confused with what this has to do with 'games' or 'game practice'. Or, you know exactly where this is going. The purpose of the report was to condense information from at least 3 academic sources, then analyze that information to determine the Who, What, When, Why, and How. However, the intention of this report is to build a knowledge base on a particular challenging topic that poses a problem in today's world. My goal is to identify those problems, then propose a solution. The end result will be an informed solution that I can create a game about in order to get the solution across to multiple people in a way where they can understand the problem and the information surrounding it.

Conversion therapy is widely considered an amoral practice that is likely to mentally scar or damage those affected by it. In many provinces of Canada, conversion therapy is banned and no longer supported by regional healthcare plans. However, the criminalization of this dangerous practice has yet to be established. The issue of conversion therapy has existed for years, but it is currently being debated within the Senate of Canada through the amendments to bill C-6. This topic is very relevant today, so it wasn't hard to find a ton of information on it.

The Research

Within the last year, multiple peer-reviewed journals have been posted about conversion therapy. I wanted to use current sources to reference in my report so my information and knowledge base would be composed of currently accepted information. Just searching for peer-reviewed journals with the keywords 'Conversion', 'Therapy', and 'Orientation' together will find anyone a great deal of info to use. My other method of gathering information was following the published transcripts of blll C-6's debates. C-6 is a movement to amend the Criminal Code to include conversion therapy of all kinds as a crime. The transcripts of the 5 debates were incredibly useful on gaining perspective on both sides of the discussion, statistics I could use for my own knowledge, and other directions I could take the information. I would recommend that if anyone was looking for information on a topic they're researching, you may be able to supplement a small amount of academic resources with external resources that are reputable.

The Report

When it comes down to the process of writing the report, it starts to get lengthy, but a grand majority of it actually just boils down to a few steps:

1. Acquire Information Points: A, B, C, D, E
2. Make surface level observation of a problem.
3. Make connections to points in support existence of problem.
   1. A + B = Supporting Point F
   2. C + D = Supporting Point G
   3. G is disputed by E, but doesn't disprove it. Mention that.
   4. F + G = Problem H
4. Now that we know H is a problem, what do we do about it?
   1. Use the information you acquired
   2. The conclusions in any academic sources
   3. Any present day information in articles or debates revolving around the events
5. You can now repeat the process above in step 1 to find a solution for Problem H.

Once you have solution H, you just need to cite the sources of each information point. It worked out really well in my case, as far as I'm aware. I think this was a fast and effective way to learn a lot about a topic I only previously had surface level knowledge on.

Conclusion

To summarize my report: conversion therapy is bad but bill C-6 needs to be reformed correctly and quickly or else the practice will not be criminalized. It's on its way out, but too slowly to be comfortable for people of varying sexual orientation or sexual identity.

In closing for this dev log, the process of researching and writing a report went very smoothly. I've been able to identify that the process only went smooth thanks to the process of discovering a topic, being able to acquire information from different articles that connect, analyzing a problem, digging into it deeper, then using the same and new resources to propose a solution. Sitting down and putting in the actual work can get a lot done in just a day or two.