Survey of Sexual and Asexual Relationship Dynamics

cdress

New member
Hello! We are conducting an online study that will further our understanding of sexual and asexual relationships.

The only requirements for participation are that you are at least 18 years old, and are in one or more romantic/sexual relationships, or have been in the past. Participation will take no longer than 20-30 minutes of your time and requires only that you complete a survey that asks questions about your relationships(s), sexual attitudes, and sexual history. Survey responses are completely anonymous. This research has been approved by the Ball State University Institutional Review Board.

Upon completion of the survey, you will have the option of providing your email address to be entered into a random drawing for one of two $25 Amazon electronic gift cards. Your email will not be linked to your previous survey responses.

If you would like to participate, please click the following link:
https://bsu.qualtrics.com/SE/?SID=SV_2mWf4NxSkvnv27j


Please feel free to express concerns or questions either by commenting below, or directly emailing either researcher.
 
I took the survey. Interesting. One question I could not answer truthfully was about cohabitation: The options were "I live with one partner" or "I live with all of my partners"... Well, I live with two of my partners and not with one. Chose the first of these two options.

Also, I did not like the fact that a lot of questions had to be answered with "primary partner" in mind. I chose to answer thinking about my legal husband, but in all other ways my other live-in partner is as much a primary to me. A lot of polyamorous people do have either several primary type relationships or none at all (solo poly).
 
Hello Nadya. Thank you for taking our survey and providing your feedback! Your living situation is definitely one that my co-researcher and I failed to consider and we will keep this in mind as a limitation to our data.

Regarding having more than one primary partner, you're actually not the first participant to point out that limitation. Our goal was for participants to discuss only one relationship, be it current, past, or one non-monogamous relationship. Based on the research we did to develop the survey, it appeared to us that in MOST cases, non-monogamy involved a primary partner with whom the relationship was in some way different from that of other partners. We chose to specify primary partner as a way to ensure that all non-monogamous participants were answering about the same partner, and not just choosing one at random. Our intention was not to make participants choose between two (or more) equal partners, so we apologize. This is something we plan to address in the future. What's important to us is that you just answered about one particular partner.
 
I too was unsure about the same questions. For the cohabitation question, I have a rotating schedule and spend some days at one house and some days at the other (two of my three partners live together). I ended up saying I only lived with the one I live the most days with, but I hesitated a lot between that option and "I live with all of my partners".

I also had the same issue about having to select a primary partner. In the end, I chose the partner I have been with the longest, but if I had started more than one relationship at the same time I wouldn't have been able to do that either.

The "primary partner" line of questioning is very common in those surveys. I wonder if that's because having several primaries (or none) is less common, or if it's some kind of self-feeding circle: since people have to either answer as though they only had one primary partner, or not answer at all, the data looks like everyone has a primary partner. But is it actually the majority of people, or not? That may be harder to determine.
 
The "primary partner" line of questioning is very common in those surveys. I wonder if that's because having several primaries (or none) is less common, or if it's some kind of self-feeding circle: since people have to either answer as though they only had one primary partner, or not answer at all, the data looks like everyone has a primary partner. But is it actually the majority of people, or not? That may be harder to determine.
This would be an interesting question for a future survey. Hey you research folks - why not do a research on this one? It really would be nice to have some data over this.
 
Hi TonBerry and Nadya. I am the other researcher for this study. It appears that relationships that fall out of the "traditional monogamous types" do not receive enough research attention. And, when researchers are finally in positions to study them, as in this case, there is no guarantee that they will have the personal experience to cover everything. As my colleague mentioned above, we did extensive research. We either missed something, or the research to date has not captured the full picture as you stated, Tonberry.

Nadya, I do think the 'primary partner' thing is worth exploring in future research. It is unfortunate that despite our effort to be all-inclusive, you both felt limited while taking the survey. Feedback from you both has been much appreciated. Perhaps in the future, once the data is fully analyzed and undergoes peer-review to ensure that the conclusions are sound and not misleading, we can share some results here... whatever they may be.
 
I tried to take the survey, but there was some kind of error at the end and I don't think I made it to the final screen. I don't know if the data I tried to submit made it through. Probably not ... :(

I had to pause taking the survey a couple of times and my computer went into sleep mode a couple of times. I assume that's what caused the error, but I just don't feel motivated to take the whole survey over again. Sorry.
 
I also had the same issue with the primary partner language. At least in this survey, there were questions about "secondary" partners instead of just ignoring their existence completely.

Why these surveys don't just use "first partner" "second partner" etc, where the definition is based on which partner came chronologically first without assigning some value judgment to it, I don't know. The word "primary" is a nebulous term that requires value judgments that simply don't apply to some polyamorous relationships.

Then again, I'm a lawyer. I might be slightly obsessed with definitions. :rolleyes:
 
Okay, I can't resist -- I carried both a BA & a BSci in sociology, & was partway into my MA work when I burned out. So, some cavils.
  1. watch out for "everyone knows" terms, starting with "bisexual." Read Klein's The Bisexual Option for starters. On the Kinsey scale, do you mean 1-5, or 2-4, or just the 3s? How do you differentiate desire from practice from experience from fantasy? How do you categorize a "committed homosexual" who occasionally enjoys sex with a close friend of the other gender?
  2. the "relationship" slots also tripped me up. Let's say I'm happily married, we are each sexually involved with housemates, all of us have outside relationships that are a mix of FWB & years-long near-primary. Your sieve puts me in multiple boxes, which defeats the purpose, & followups don't seem effective at creating useful data points.
  3. the next question thus fails: how many people are in my intimate network. Well, the only sane answer is "that depends." Do you mean those with whom I am sexually involved? (How long between sexual encounters before they're invalid?) Or do you mean to include my wife's lovers? or those of my housemates? All in all, at what point is someone NOT a member of my intimate network?
I'm not meaning to simply be adversarial. I've been hoping for proper research since Constantine & Constantine. But even as a preliminary groundwork toward deeper research, I hope to see more than merely another collection of "gosh wow" numbers about our deviant subculture.
 
I took the survey. There were a few things I found problematic with it.

First of all, I think all surveys that are asking questions about a variety of lifestyles and approaches to relationships should have a blank space at the end of each page where people can qualify their answers in their own words. I felt that many of the choices offered were limiting and not accurate for some of the questions, so it was hard to answer in a way that felt authentic to me.

At the very beginning, the choices we had to select from regarding what kind of relationships we have were:
  • Closed marriage -Married to one person of either the same or opposite sex
  • Open marriage- Married to one person of the same or opposite sex; we are open to sexual and/or romantic relationships with other people
  • Group marriage- Married to multiple people(male, female, etc) and this is an agreed-upon arrangement
  • Polyandrous- A relationship involving multiple husbands and this is an agreed-upon arrangement
  • Polygynous- A relationship involving multiple wives and this is an agreed-upon arrangment
  • Polyamorous- A relationship with more than one person and this is an agreed-upon arrangement
  • Polyfidelitous- A relationship with multiple people, but do not have sex with anyone out of this group. This is an agreed-upon arrangement
  • Friends with Benefits- Regularly engaging in sexual intercourse and/or other sexually-related activities with friends(s) to whom there is no romantic commitment
  • Dating exclusively- Dating one person
  • Dating non-exclusively- Dating more than one person

The problem with the above is that there was only one choice we could make. For example, I practice solo polyamory. So, I could choose three that would apply: *Polyamorous, *Friends with Benefits, and *Dating Non-exclusively. How I interpret those three choices is that I practice and am open to having multiple ongoing, loving relationships while also having more casual, mostly sexually-focused loving relationships with friends, and dating people whenever I feel like it.

I think there would also be people in a few of the other categories who would also be able to say they engage in FWB relationships and dating as well whatever type of poly they practice.

Next, I found this wording troublesome:
Please indicate the number of partners in this relationship. If you are not currently in a relationship, please answer regarding your most recent relationship.​

"In this relationship?" How about "in these relationships?" The current wording came across to me that, if someone indicates they have three partners (as an example), you (the survey makers) are assuming they are all part of one relationship. Many, many polyamorists keep their relationships separate from each other. As a solo polyamorist, that wording bothered me.

Additionally, just as an aside, I refer to my lovers as lovers (or lover-friends) rather than partners. I see a difference between someone who is solely a sex partner and someone who is a relationship partner, and I had the sense that this survey was more focused on relationship partners -- IOW, having a certain kind of commitment to a partnership. I see the word "partner" as someone who is involved in making decisions about my life and my actions, like a spouse or a business partner. Since I am the only one responsible for my life and how I conduct my relationships, and I do not have to run anything by anyone I'm involved with, the people I get involved with could be more than FWBs, but not a "partner" because carries some kind of obligation with it that "lover" doesn't, in my mind. Anyway...

Like others here have stated, I also have a problem with all of the questions about a "Primary Partner." Like many many other polyfolk, I do not assign any hierarchy to my love relationships. No one is primary, secondary, or ranked in any way. As far as I am concerned, hierarchy has no place in loving relationships. Everyone with whom I am involved is equally as important to me, and no one's needs come before anyone else's unless there is a big emergency.

Finally, I did not like this wording:
Imagine that you find out that your partner has fallen in love with another person. Your partner has become deeply emotionally attached to this other person, and thoughts of this other person consume your partner’s every thought.​
Consuming every thought? It is possible to love one person, then fall in love with another person without being consumed all day by constant thoughts of them. I felt that there was some faulty logic applied to composing this question. So, while I would be happy for someone I love to be in love with someone else, it would be an issue if I were in their company and they were consumed by thoughts about someone else. Or consumed by thoughts of anything else for that matter, because I like my lovers to be present with me when we're together. I like to think that most people I would be involved with are mature and self-aware, and can manage multiple relationships while still being able to be present in the rest of their life. So, for me, the "consuming every thought" bit really colored my answers. For example, I would be off-the-charts totally happy for them to be in love with another, but I answered "Somewhat" happy because I had to imagine them being totally consumed by thoughts of another while with me.

Same logic applies to the question that came after that about them being sexual with someone else.

Anyway, I hope you (the researchers) find our feedback useful and include it along with the survey results when you analyze the data.
 
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So, I am stuck at 2.4.

I am sorry, I am not a native speaker. What does "make out" mean in your study? Google told me it usually means kissing passionatelly, but that doesn't seem to make sense.
I will assume by logic of the enquiery that it means something like "being naked and sexual without intercourse", including oral etc., because else this option is missing.

Also, my partner is polyamorous (he has a live-in partner), but I am dating him only. I fell for a trap of choosing "dating exclusively", because that's me, in a secondary/(near to coprimary) role, but since I didn't encounter any question about the number of my partners other partners, or my partners relationship status up to half of the survey, I figured I choose wrong and closed it. I can't get back to the beginning now. Sorry.
 
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So, I am stuck at 2.4.

I am sorry, I am not a native speaker. What does "make out" mean in your study? Google told me it usually means kissing passionatelly, but that doesn't seem to make sense.
I will assume by logic of the enquiery that it means something like "being naked and sexual without intercourse", including oral etc., because else this option is missing.

"Making out" usually refers to intense, deep kissing, with tongue, but not necessarily naked. You can have a "make-out session" where it is focused on long, deep kisses, yet still be fully dressed.
 
"Making out" usually refers to intense, deep kissing, with tongue, but not necessarily naked. You can have a "make-out session" where it is focused on long, deep kisses, yet still be fully dressed.
Thank you.
There is a question about tongue and/or french kissing and no question about sex without intercourse though, so I figure the authors mean something different. They wouldn't be assuming sex is either fully clothed or intercourse, would they?

Still, the section doesn't really cover a some sexual interactions, seems they are not interested in kinky play partners etc. :)
 
I noticed that, too, but I am guessing that to the researchers "making out" is tongue-kissing for a longer, sustained amount of time, with bodies together (perhaps with some groping?) while I suppose you can kiss someone with tongue and not be connected at more than just the mouth nor be rolling around to do it. Although, the times I stood on a street corner at the end of a date and kissed someone with tongue, I called it making out, so I think this might be something that is interpreted differently by different people.

Last year, I went to a co-worker's wedding and kissed a guy who happens to be her cousin. We just kissed a few times, very sweetly, but since we were on the dance floor surrounded by people -- no tongue. When I told her we kissed, she said "Oh my god, you made out with my cousin!" and I corrected her. I said, "No, we just kissed. I would hardly call a few kisses on the dance floor making out."

I don't know. The categories in a few questions seemed a bit repetitive, yet also incomplete, to me.
 
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I agree that I couldn't figure out what the difference between French kissing and making out was supposed to be. I have always considered the two to be pretty much synonymous. I guess making out can mean French kissing while also groping each other? But French kissing is a kind of making out, too, IMO. So... I don't know. Most of the time, when people say "make out" I think French kissing. If they say "we made out on the couch like teenagers" I'll think maybe groping was involved because that's how I picture teenagers.

I definitely agree that a comment box after each question or page would be very useful.
 
Hello everyone!

We just wanted to thank you all for your feedback. My co-researcher and I are not only studying minority relationships for the first time, but this is the first time we're doing research on our own. So your responses are extremely important and helpful. We plan to respond to each of your comments individually to address all of your concerns as soon as we have the time to really read and adequately respond to each.

Just wanted to let you know that we are seeing your comments and listening to your concerns to keep in mind as limitations in this research, as well as suggestions and improvements for future research, as we both would like to research this topic more in the future. So expect our replies soon!
 
I took the survey. There were a few things I found problematic with it.

First of all, I think all surveys that are asking questions about a variety of lifestyles and approaches to relationships should have a blank space at the end of each page where people can qualify their answers in their own words. I felt that many of the choices offered were limiting and not accurate for some of the questions, so it was hard to answer in a way that felt authentic to me.

At the very beginning, the choices we had to select from regarding what kind of relationships we have were:
  • Closed marriage -Married to one person of either the same or opposite sex
  • Open marriage- Married to one person of the same or opposite sex; we are open to sexual and/or romantic relationships with other people
  • Group marriage- Married to multiple people(male, female, etc) and this is an agreed-upon arrangement
  • Polyandrous- A relationship involving multiple husbands and this is an agreed-upon arrangement
  • Polygynous- A relationship involving multiple wives and this is an agreed-upon arrangment
  • Polyamorous- A relationship with more than one person and this is an agreed-upon arrangement
  • Polyfidelitous- A relationship with multiple people, but do not have sex with anyone out of this group. This is an agreed-upon arrangement
  • Friends with Benefits- Regularly engaging in sexual intercourse and/or other sexually-related activities with friends(s) to whom there is no romantic commitment
  • Dating exclusively- Dating one person
  • Dating non-exclusively- Dating more than one person

The problem with the above is that there was only one choice we could make. For example, I practice solo polyamory. So, I could choose three that would apply: *Polyamorous, *Friends with Benefits, and *Dating Non-exclusively. How I interpret those three choices is that I practice and am open to having multiple ongoing, loving relationships while also having more casual, mostly sexually-focused loving relationships with friends, and dating people whenever I feel like it.

I think there would also be people in a few of the other categories who would also be able to say they engage in FWB relationships and dating as well whatever type of poly they practice.

Next, I found this wording troublesome:
Please indicate the number of partners in this relationship. If you are not currently in a relationship, please answer regarding your most recent relationship.​

"In this relationship?" How about "in these relationships?" The current wording came across to me that, if someone indicates they have three partners (as an example), you (the survey makers) are assuming they are all part of one relationship. Many, many polyamorists keep their relationships separate from each other. As a solo polyamorist, that wording bothered me.

Additionally, just as an aside, I refer to my lovers as lovers (or lover-friends) rather than partners. I see a difference between someone who is solely a sex partner and someone who is a relationship partner, and I had the sense that this survey was more focused on relationship partners -- IOW, having a certain kind of commitment to a partnership. I see the word "partner" as someone who is involved in making decisions about my life and my actions, like a spouse or a business partner. Since I am the only one responsible for my life and how I conduct my relationships, and I do not have to run anything by anyone I'm involved with, the people I get involved with could be more than FWBs, but not a "partner" because carries some kind of obligation with it that "lover" doesn't, in my mind. Anyway...

Like others here have stated, I also have a problem with all of the questions about a "Primary Partner." Like many many other polyfolk, I do not assign any hierarchy to my love relationships. No one is primary, secondary, or ranked in any way. As far as I am concerned, hierarchy has no place in loving relationships. Everyone with whom I am involved is equally as important to me, and no one's needs come before anyone else's unless there is a big emergency.

Finally, I did not like this wording:
Imagine that you find out that your partner has fallen in love with another person. Your partner has become deeply emotionally attached to this other person, and thoughts of this other person consume your partner’s every thought.​
Consuming every thought? It is possible to love one person, then fall in love with another person without being consumed all day by constant thoughts of them. I felt that there was some faulty logic applied to composing this question. So, while I would be happy for someone I love to be in love with someone else, it would be an issue if I were in their company and they were consumed by thoughts about someone else. Or consumed by thoughts of anything else for that matter, because I like my lovers to be present with me when we're together. I like to think that most people I would be involved with are mature and self-aware, and can manage multiple relationships while still being able to be present in the rest of their life. So, for me, the "consuming every thought" bit really colored my answers. For example, I would be off-the-charts totally happy for them to be in love with another, but I answered "Somewhat" happy because I had to imagine them being totally consumed by thoughts of another while with me.

Same logic applies to the question that came after that about them being sexual with someone else.

Anyway, I hope you (the researchers) find our feedback useful and include it along with the survey results when you analyze the data.



Hi nycindie,

It is always important for survey makers to be as inclusive as possible, which was our aim. However, it is nearly impossible to have a survey that caters to everyone because many people define things differently, and if we get too complex, it could make data analysis too difficult. With that said, certainly allowing people to select more than one relationship option is doable. You mentioned that the wording of the number of partners was troublesome. I understand, but our intent was focus on the survey taker, not the survey taker's partner(s). It would be impossible for the person taking the survey be able to answer some of the questions that followed from the perspective of others.

As for the question about being "consumed," Yes, it would be possible to love multiple people but not being consumed by them. This particular question is concerned specifically with being consumed all the time, so I think your "somewhat" answer sounds like an accurate one for you.

"Primary partner" was definitely a limitation of our research and will be addressed during analysis. We somehow were under the impression from research that most had a primary partner. So, this has been very enlightening to us in this regard.
 
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I tried to take the survey, but there was some kind of error at the end and I don't think I made it to the final screen. I don't know if the data I tried to submit made it through. Probably not ... :(

I had to pause taking the survey a couple of times and my computer went into sleep mode a couple of times. I assume that's what caused the error, but I just don't feel motivated to take the whole survey over again. Sorry.



Hi kdt26417. We apologize that you had some technical difficulties. Unfortunately with responses being anonymous, there's no way to know if your results did in fact submit or not. However, since you did take the time to complete the survey, if you would like to submit your email address to the drawing for the $25 Amazon e-gift cards, please feel free to message my co-researcher or I your email address so we can include it. If you would like to, you can message either of us on here, or even email us directly. Thank you!
 
I also had the same issue with the primary partner language. At least in this survey, there were questions about "secondary" partners instead of just ignoring their existence completely.

Why these surveys don't just use "first partner" "second partner" etc, where the definition is based on which partner came chronologically first without assigning some value judgment to it, I don't know. The word "primary" is a nebulous term that requires value judgments that simply don't apply to some polyamorous relationships.

Then again, I'm a lawyer. I might be slightly obsessed with definitions. :rolleyes:


Hello AutumnLeaves, thank you for your feedback! Our decision to ask participants to discuss their primary partner was to ensure that all participants talked about only one partner, and the same partner rather than a random one. Also, based on the background research we conducted to design the survey, we were under the impression that the typical non-monogamous relationship involves one primary partner, who isn't necessarily seen as superior in any way, just different. For example, a person may consider their spouse their primary partner (based on their legal bond, shared home/finances, maybe children, etc), while other partners are not considered primary, or at least, that was how we came to understand it.
Since launching the survey, we have received lots of feedback expressing the same concern you have. So it is becoming evident that the information we gathered is not entirely inclusive of many real-life situations and relationships, and this is a limitation of our design, and an error to avoid in future research.
 
Okay, I can't resist -- I carried both a BA & a BSci in sociology, & was partway into my MA work when I burned out. So, some cavils.
  1. watch out for "everyone knows" terms, starting with "bisexual." Read Klein's The Bisexual Option for starters. On the Kinsey scale, do you mean 1-5, or 2-4, or just the 3s? How do you differentiate desire from practice from experience from fantasy? How do you categorize a "committed homosexual" who occasionally enjoys sex with a close friend of the other gender?
  2. the "relationship" slots also tripped me up. Let's say I'm happily married, we are each sexually involved with housemates, all of us have outside relationships that are a mix of FWB & years-long near-primary. Your sieve puts me in multiple boxes, which defeats the purpose, & followups don't seem effective at creating useful data points.
  3. the next question thus fails: how many people are in my intimate network. Well, the only sane answer is "that depends." Do you mean those with whom I am sexually involved? (How long between sexual encounters before they're invalid?) Or do you mean to include my wife's lovers? or those of my housemates? All in all, at what point is someone NOT a member of my intimate network?
I'm not meaning to simply be adversarial. I've been hoping for proper research since Constantine & Constantine. But even as a preliminary groundwork toward deeper research, I hope to see more than merely another collection of "gosh wow" numbers about our deviant subculture.


Hi Ravenscroft, we appreciate your feedback. For our survey. we're basing sexual orientation on self-identification, which is why we just have people choose the one they identify with; we want them to categorize themselves. Whether this label defines their attraction, behavior, desire, etc. is not of particular concern for our analysis.

Regarding the relationship type options, I think during survey design we hadn't considered that the relationship with each partner could be considered a different type. We never intended to force people to choose options that are only partially true, which is why we worked hard to provide as many choices as we could come up with. So we hope participants are choosing only answers they feel are accurate, or using the "other" box to be more specific (which some have already done so far).

For the number of partners in the relationship question, we intended for participants to indicate how many partners they personally are currently involved with. I think the word "network" is not consistent with that we intended there. We want to focus on the participant, not their partners, and partners' partners, etc etc.

As far as your final statement, we hope you don't think our intent is to shed negative light on the subculture. To be clear, we are just interested in the dynamics involved with sexual and/or asexual relationships. We wish to be objective. We feel like, by and large, the scientific community has ignored certain relationship types, so we're trying not to make the same mistakes.
 
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