Polyamory Research Survey

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Research1

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Researchers at Indiana University are interested in learning about consensual non-monogamy. The researchers are looking for adults over the age of 18, who are married or in a committed relationship with at least one other person, and have been or are now in a consensually non-monogamous relationship. Please click on the following link to read more about the survey, and to take a brief set of screening questions to see if you qualify. If you do, the survey will take approximately 20-30 minutes.

https://iu.co1.qualtrics.com/SE/?SID=SV_6zq0e8P9R6AWGhv
 
I have completed your survey. I think it took me longer than 30 minutes but other than that I found it fairly easy to take.
 
Fairly easy - took me less than 20 minutes (but I read REALLY fast!)

I was curious as to why there weren't any questions about secondary (or co-primary) partners.

Weird thing I noticed? List of US states was not strictly alphabetical! (The M's, for instance, were split). (and, yes, I have some OCD tendancies!)
 
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Some notes/comments about the questionnaire:

My husband and I are polyamorous but neither of us has another partner right now. This wasn't a configuration option.

"How old were you when you married or committed to your spouse or primary partner? (Enter YY) If you prefer not to answer, please skip."

I don't know which to pick. When we got married (28) or when we committed (25)? Is the latter only for unmarried people?

"Which partner suggested or brought up the idea of non-monogamy first?" We were both poly long before we met. Neither of us brought it up.

Religion doesn't give an option for affiliated atheist.

Otherwise, I found the questions simple, although some were really repetitive, asking the same thing in many different ways.
 
Your survey is very married couple biased.. I stopped taking it because of that. Murf is just as important to me as Butch is.
 
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If you are looking for an accurate sample of ethically non-monogamous people, then restricting the survey to those who are currently in an committed relationship restricts that definition to a certain, specific portion of the population. And that certain, specific portion of the poly population is important, it is not the entirety of the community.

If you want to examine attitudes of currently committed people with multiple partners, that is a legitimate study. But that is not the population you describe as wanting to gather information about. You present this as a survey of the broad community. However, that is not accurate. This is a failure of study design and is poor science. Reconsider the focus of your study and either narrow it's focus - while acknowledging that you are studying a slice of polyamorous relationships - or revise it to incorporate a broader array of poly practices.

There are many folks who do not have conventionally committed relationships and are polyamorous with a whole variety of relationships. There are people who are asexual and poly. There are people who practice solo poly (go check out solopoly.net to learn more about this particular poly flavor) who do not define committed relationships as necessarily being about living together, having children or mingling finances. There are people who refuse to have hierarchical relationships. Poly is broader and deeper than 'just' two people in a conventionally recognizable committed relationship who also have other partners. There is nothing wrong with that but it's not the whole story - it's a strand among many others.
 
Couple privilege and restricting study

Dagferi and opalescent, thanks much for your thoughts and for your valuable time and consideration. As a researcher it is always painful for me to take a broad wish for research and winnow it down to research-able questions. In any given study, a researcher either does so, or loses the ability to say anything about the results. As you have perceptively noted, this study is dyad-centric. By making it so, we necessarily exclude some people and some experiences, particularly those who do not practice hierarchical relationships. I'm glad you are making your voices heard, because hierarchical relationships are only part of the wonderful, vast array of experiences we humans can have, and maybe by doing so, you will have planted some important seeds for future research.
 
Your survey is very married couple biased.. I stopped taking it because of that. Murf is just as important to me as Butch is.

:) No worries Dagferi, you're right - this study is not about non-monogamy in general, as there are many questions that are dyadic. Unfortunately we were unable to "do all the studies" in one survey. Give my best to Murf and Butch, equally. :)
 
@opalescent

"If you are looking for an accurate sample of ethically non-monogamous people, then restricting the survey to those who are currently in an committed relationship restricts that definition to a certain, specific portion of the population. And that certain, specific portion of the poly population is important, it is not the entirety of the community."

Amen, we totally agree with you. In addition, it's self-selected as many of these surveys are, so it's not going to be a representative sample. That's another point though. Anyway, yes, this is a specific subset of the bigger population.

"If you want to examine attitudes of currently committed people with multiple partners, that is a legitimate study. But that is not the population you describe as wanting to gather information about. You present this as a survey of the broad community. However, that is not accurate. This is a failure of study design and is poor science. Reconsider the focus of your study and either narrow it's focus - while acknowledging that you are studying a slice of polyamorous relationships - or revise it to incorporate a broader array of poly practices."

That could have been a little more clear in the first sentence of the announcement, but it is very clear in the following sentences, the informed consent, and the screening process. So, not a failure of study design, but perhaps a mistake of advertising in this case, specifically the first sentence. Thanks for the advice though - we'd love to hear more - what is your background with research methodology, surveys, etc.? Always open to feedback. :)

"There are many folks who do not have conventionally committed relationships and are polyamorous with a whole variety of relationships. There are people who are asexual and poly. There are people who practice solo poly (go check out solopoly.net to learn more about this particular poly flavor) who do not define committed relationships as necessarily being about living together, having children or mingling finances. There are people who refuse to have hierarchical relationships. Poly is broader and deeper than 'just' two people in a conventionally recognizable committed relationship who also have other partners. There is nothing wrong with that but it's not the whole story - it's a strand among many others."

Right, of course.
 
Hi Research People:

My experience is that most poly people do not have hierarchical relationships. It's not even an "alternative" subset, it's the majority. You're not just "excluding some people" from your research, you're basing your whole study on the archaic notion that a person needs to quantify and measure one relationship against another. The whole idea of polyamory is that love is as big as the human mind and heart can conceive, so you're missing the entire basis of a movement if your research is built on the premise of a pecking order.
 
I took the survey, but I agree with what has been posted here. I don't rank my husbands - they are both my primary.
 
"My experience is that most poly people do not have hierarchical relationships. It's not even an "alternative" subset, it's the majority. You're not just "excluding some people" from your research, you're basing your whole study on the archaic notion that a person needs to quantify and measure one relationship against another. The whole idea of polyamory is that love is as big as the human mind and heart can conceive, so you're missing the entire basis of a movement if your research is built on the premise of a pecking order."

Thanks for the comment. I disagree with you, but that's only because you of course can't see the whole picture behind the scenes. A primary partner is not needed to take the survey, if one has a legally married partner - that's enough even without hierarchy. This particular data analysis requires questions about a dyad.

One thing I really do appreciate about your feedback though - that we can write this up as a possible limitation of the study - that it may indeed be covering only a minority subset of the population, as you said. Good to think about. That's okay though as we're not trying to study non-monogamy or even polyamory as a whole, or represent the whole population by any means.
 
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"I took the survey, but I agree with what has been posted here. I don't rank my husbands - they are both my primary."

That's fine - ranking them is not necessary, as long as you are legally married to one of them.
 
.....we're not trying to study non-monogamy or even polyamory as a whole, or represent the whole population by any means.

What is the purpose of your study, then? You really need to be more clear that you're not really studying non-monogamy, but a tiny subset of non-monogamy. It's like studying family dynamics and using only-children in your control group. I sure hope that your study doesn't get published as "fact." You're defending the structure of your study so that you can keep the study going, when fundamental flaws have been pointed out. What happens when researchers find along the way that their very premise is a misunderstanding of "the whole picture?"
 
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"You've disagreed with me about what polyamory is, about what all the types of non-monogamy are?" - No, haha.:)
 
"What is the purpose of your study, then? You really need to be more clear that you're not really studying non-monogamy, but a tiny subset of non-monogamy. It's like studying family dynamics and using only-children in your control group."

We tried to make that very clear in the informed consent and the screening questions, but thank you for the feedback. Next time, we will brainstorm about how to make that even more clear. It clearly wasn't clear enough for some people (you're not alone in your thought on it, clearly. :D ). Anyway, thank you again, sincerely.

Honestly, we would have loved to study the population as a whole, but could not as we don't have access to a random sample. So as it is, none of our results can be generalized to the wider population. Unfortunately, that's the nature of the game for social science and smaller groups of the total world or U.S. population.
 
OK, so what good is your study? I don't mean that in a snarky way, but am inquiring. Every study has its limitations, so given yours, how will your study move social sciences forward academically?
 
OK, so what good is your study? I don't mean that in a snarky way, but am inquiring. Every study has its limitations, so given yours, how will your study move social sciences forward academically?

We're hoping it will add a tiny piece to the existing knowledge base on non-monogamy - in this case, specifically those who have dyads that come in to therapy, or legally married partners. 2/3 of us are therapists, and typically see 2 partners in therapy at at time, not usually more than that (not sure why exactly). Or we see a couple wanting to try out non-monogamy, or one partner does and the other does not, etc. We'd like to have just a little more knowledge in this area to be able to facilitate therapy a little better.

We'd also like to continue studying this topic - so this survey per se is not *the* study, but rather a specific one that will hopefully be followed by more studies by us or others. We'd need to first figure out how to measure, say, triadic or group satisfaction, or another way to measure specific dyads without needing an overall primary partner.

One other thought - We *are* admittedly biased in terms of dyads - we believe that in terms of evolution and survival, the brain will automatically choose *one* person over the other(s) when threatened sufficiently, for example. Who this partner is might change all the time, even, but in any given moment, there has to be a preference, just because it's a matter of survival in our brains. Children do the same thing - they might even equally prefer mom and dad or mom and mom or whatever their caregivers may be, but in a moment of intense distress, with both caregivers in the room, they will choose one of them rather than be frozen not knowing what do to. Of course, again, that could change throughout one's life. Perhaps one issue I'm realizing now in typing this is we're thinking of "primary" in a different way than it is seen among many poly folks. Good to consider, so thanks! We're learning. Thank you for your patience. :)
 
As a study of polyamory as a whole it can provide good information. As an view of the population as a whole, nope. Since I came here, I have seen so many different variations of poly. Some I would not live in, but that doesn't mean it is wrong, just your way. We are good with a wife and a few guys on eh outside. But that is our way
 
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