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survey on asexuality


Lord Happy Toast

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Lord Happy Toast

The following has been approved for posting on AVEN by the AVEN Project Team.

Julia Prims, of the University Of Colorado Boulder, is conducting research into asexuality for their honors thesis:

This study is intended to examine the cultural dismissal of asexuality and self-esteem, depression, and self-concept in asexually identified individuals. You are being asked to participate in this study because you either identify as asexual or have ties to the asexual community. You will be one of 500 people to participate in this study.

During the course of this study, you will be asked to fill out a questionnaire which will ask you various questions about your identity and experiences as an asexual. If you do not identify as asexual, you will be asked to skip some questions. You will then complete three psychological surveys measuring depression, self-esteem, and self-concept. This study should take approximately 20-45 minutes.

If you identify as asexual, demisexual, grey-a, or as anywhere on the asexual spectrum, please consider taking part in this quick and easy survey.

Click here to participate

The plan is to publish the paper in a scientific journal and, potentially, present it at conferences.

Edit: This survey is open again.

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'Please enter the date below'. :huh:, does that mean the current date or ones date of birth? *Is confused*.

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I'd default to current date.

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Thank you to everyone who participated!

I had not expected to get so many responses so fast. What I had expected to be a month-long period of data collection was over in less than a day! I have just hit the maximum amount of participants I was allowed for this study so some of you may have been cut-off mid-survey. I apologize for this and I would like to thank you all for your interest and participation!

Thank you once again for all of your help!

-Julia Prims

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It was actually collected over the course of 12 hours. I didn't expect it to go nearly as fast as it did (I had honestly expected a month or two!) and so I was a bit late on contacting AVEN to ask for permission to look for participants here on the forums. I'm sorry for the inconvenience.

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Just out of curiosity, do you mind me asking what other places you looked for participants? I have to wonder where else on the web there are so many asexuals that the 500-participant limit was reached in such a short span of time. That's pretty quick, after all!

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philos-phobos

When you're finished your work would it be possible to put a link to your findings here on Aven? It would be interesting to see what your findings are.

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Aw, I was meaning to do this.

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  • 2 weeks later...

Hey there everyone! It's Julia again!

I need another 500 participants so I have reopened the survey so if you wanted to take it last time but were unable to here's your chance!

Please refrain from taking the survey again if you've already done it before.

I'll be very grateful for the help! Just remember you have to be 18 or older to participate in this study!

(And don't worry- I'll definitely tell everyone what I find when I'm done analyzing the data!)

Thanks, everyone!

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Member 895623

Hey there everyone! It's Julia again!

I need another 500 participants so I have reopened the survey so if you wanted to take it last time but were unable to here's your chance! .... (And don't worry- I'll definitely tell everyone what I find when I'm done analyzing the data!)

Thanks, everyone!

Thanks for reopening the survey, Julia. I just completed it. Just curious though.. usually for academic studies, the larger the sample population the better. Why was your study limited to 500 and now 1000 participants? Could you have left it open for awhile and see how many respondents you get?

I look forward to see the results of your study! Thank you for doing this. :)

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I clicked the buttons to reply, when i saw questions :rolleyes:

**totally did NOT pass out during the survey**

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Thanks for reopening the survey, Julia. I just completed it. Just curious though.. usually for academic studies, the larger the sample population the better. Why was your study limited to 500 and now 1000 participants? Could you have left it open for awhile and see how many respondents you get?

I look forward to see the results of your study! Thank you for doing this. :)

Thanks for your help!

As for that- It's a bit complicated and there's a few reasons for that. The first is that, though I'm allowed to write a paper and conduct my own research due to my status as an honors student, I can't collect as many responses as a researcher with a Ph.D or even a graduate researcher because I am an undergraduate. In fact the head of the honors department was very impressed that the Institutional Review Board even let me ask for 500 much less 1000!

There's also a problem of sample size. Neither me nor my faculty adviser really expected me to get more than 50 people at first. Then when that survey last year got 800 responses we bumped it up to 500 just so we wouldn't lose any data. When we got all 500 people in one day we decided we could risk asking for permission to go for a bigger number of participants because we had gotten so many!

It also helps that, though my adviser helped me write and edit the survey, I'm doing all of the data analysis on my own. 1000 responses, most of which contain qualitative data that programs like Excel can't process, will take up a lot of time and I have to finish my data analysis and present my paper by next November!

I would've loved to ask for more participants if possible but it just wasn't feasible.

I'm actually a bit concerned about getting 1000 as-is. Though I got my first 500 in one day, I've only gotten 90 in the past two and no one new has started taking it for a few hours. I hope I can get some more responses soon and that I didn't tap out the people willing or able to take it in the first round!

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Nomad in Stasis

I took it. I was glad that I could type out more in detail. Thanks. Good luck.

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I took it...

I normally don't check topics twice, even less if I know the survey was closed...

I almost didn't see the edit that said it was open again... maybe many other aventites missed it.

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A good survey. I've taken a few I found on AVEN and this one had some good questions. Of course, I am going through some difficult times now and it has affected my depression and anxiety issues. Luckily I have some people who are very supportive now and some changes coming up, maybe to help push me into a more preferable environment. Nevertheless, I hope my contribution will be helpful. :cake:

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Member 895623

though I'm allowed to write a paper and conduct my own research due to my status as an honors student, I can't collect as many responses as a researcher with a Ph.D or even a graduate researcher because I am an undergraduate. In fact the head of the honors department was very impressed that the Institutional Review Board even let me ask for 500 much less 1000!... I'm doing all of the data analysis on my own. 1000 responses, most of which contain qualitative data that programs like Excel can't process, will take up a lot of time and I have to finish my data analysis and present my paper by next November!...

I'm actually a bit concerned about getting 1000 as-is. Though I got my first 500 in one day, I've only gotten 90 in the past two and no one new has started taking it for a few hours. I hope I can get some more responses soon and that I didn't tap out the people willing or able to take it in the first round!

Julia, it's great that you're doing this. You have my moral support. The questions are well thought out. And- congratulations on being an honor undergraduate student! I'm guessing you'll probably need to use some specialized statistical analysis tool/software (beyond the basic Excel) to analyze the correlations among the different aspects of depression and asexuality.

Perhaps try to re-announce the reopening of survey on the forum where more people will see it? If you feel like you need to have a better balance of age distribution among the respondents, maybe post something on the Older Asexual forum too. I was surprised that the first 500 quota was reached within hours the first time around (but that's only because I don't personally know that many asexuals in real life so it contradicts my personal expectation). Good luck!

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kriptotem

will you share your results with us?

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Hello Julia,

I should probably be patient and read your methodology when the paper is written but... patience isn't one of my better qualities. I happen to be a young researcher as well, and I just wondered what techniques you planned to use for the analysis. It's never easy to analyse data that has been collected without an inferential sampling design and I was just interested to know how you overcome that issue.

Good luck :)

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Just done it from Spain!

I'm happy the test was able to be done, I first see it but then read the thread and thought: Ouch, it's not avaible anymore, but then I read you reopenned the questionary and I was glad because I love to take test about asexuality, and much more those related to asexuality and ansiety and depression.

Hope you get interesting results and you share them!

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I wonder how accurate these surveys can be? Unless they are placed on every known Asexual website in the world then surely the survey can only reflect on the opinions of Asexuality through one website that being Aven and not on Asexuality as a whole?

Aven is mostly caucasean, working to middle class and within the western world and as such is a small piece of the Asexual matrix. So as I mentioned earlier I do wonder just how accurate they can truly be?

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Member 895623

I wonder how accurate these surveys can be? Unless they are placed on every known Asexual website in the world then surely the survey can only reflect on the opinions of Asexuality through one website that being Aven and not on Asexuality as a whole?

Aven is mostly caucasean, working to middle class and within the western world and as such is a small piece of the Asexual matrix. So as I mentioned earlier I do wonder just how accurate they can truly be?

Good question and good points. I try not to steal Julia's thunder (because this is her survey so she should be the one to respond to your question about the specifics of her research approach...), but in general, in the world of academic research, it is perfectly ok to have a sample population that represents only certain fractions of the human race. As long as you clearly and explicitly acknowledge the limitations and potential biases resulting from your limited sample population when you submit/publish your results, and provide a thorough discussion on how these limitations and potential biases may skew your results in certain direction, and touch on whether or how you might expect your conclusions to change if the sample population covers additional fractions of human race, the research work is still good. Transparency and the robustness of methods are the key.

p.s. just to be "transparent" about where I'm coming from with my post: I am an Asian with a PhD, living in the Western world.

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I wonder how accurate these surveys can be? Unless they are placed on every known Asexual website in the world then surely the survey can only reflect on the opinions of Asexuality through one website that being Aven and not on Asexuality as a whole?

Aven is mostly caucasean, working to middle class and within the western world and as such is a small piece of the Asexual matrix. So as I mentioned earlier I do wonder just how accurate they can truly be?

Hi again, Savant, since i know you joined yesterday as i helped to activate your account just today, where do you take these statistics from?

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Stellifera, of course you are right in that sample surveys are always usefull as an information resource my only concern is that survey claimed to be a study rather than a small survey.

Ithaca, Again thank you for your kind assistance. I would not say figures per say but merely observations of Aven over the last three months before my joining. Reviewing threads, observing inputs from people giving away free information on age, location, sex and social structure dynamics it would not be unreasonable to make the mostly caucasean, working to middle class and within the western world observation.

The survey request is valid as an information gathering option but I still feel it may reflect Avens position more than Asexualities.

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Reviewing threads, observing inputs from people giving away free information on age, location, sex and social structure dynamics it would not be unreasonable to make the mostly caucasean, working to middle class and within the western world observation.

How would you have any idea of my age/social structure dynamics/race, since they're not on my profile? And even leaving aside the fact that many profiles don't have those data posted (or the data may not be truthful), have you inspected every profile on AVEN?

There's no point in making assumptions about the demographics of AVEN, except perhaps to say that AVENites skew toward being younger than 40. Even that is suspect.

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@Savant: in order to use most inferential techniques you need a random sample, in other terms respondents have been selected according to a predefined strategy that complies with a variety of rules.

It doesn't mean that a convenience sample (such as this one) cannot provide valuable information. You just can't apply most statistical methods, so there is no notion of 'accuracy' as you said, which means something very specific in stats, simply because you cannot carry out any estimation procedure.

This is why I was asking Julia about her analysis. I am not very familiar with ways social researchers can deal with non-random samples, and I am very interested to know more about it!

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