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Survey on the asexual / aromantic spectrum


Tarfeather

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In this community, we have classified romantic asexuals and aromantic asexuals, but is that all there is to it? With this survey, I'd like to explore that issue.

http://tinyurl.com/p342bza

The survey is for anyone, not just for asexuals. Responses from non-asexual folk will be highly appreciated (Push the control group off the other side!)

Please try to answer every question (except the last one, that one is optional). If I get enough answers, my hope is to perform some statistical analysis (clustering) in order to find out whether the respondents fall into neat little categories or not.

This is just a hobby project of mine, and not in any way associated with official / academic research.

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Submitted! I'd be interested in the results myself after you've collected enough responses.

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verily-forsooth-egads

I'm not satisfied with the options for the second to last question. If I feel arousal, it's from thinking of something, but not a person.

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Done, and as SkyWorld, I'd be interested in whatever analysis you do with the results. Stats are always interesting!

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I'm not satisfied with the options for the second to last question. If I feel arousal, it's from thinking of something, but not a person.

Huh.. Yeah, I was thinking about that possibility, but it got lost during the process. :( I'll see if I can add something, I think google forms allows that without messing up the results..

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By physical arousal, you mean of any sort correct? If my brain sort of.. lights up (for lack of a better way to put it), or I become more attentive when seeing someone I find good looking/attractive, that is physical arousal.

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By physical arousal, you mean of any sort correct? If my brain sort of.. lights up (for lack of a better way to put it), or I become more attentive when seeing someone I find good looking/attractive, that is physical arousal.

I was trying to put that into words when I created the enthusiasm option, but failed. So yeah, I guess the options there aren't good. But generally it'll be fine if people interpret it that way, it's not like the results need to be super-accurate.

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I find the questions really interesting to think about - but difficult to answer accurately. I have little experience of actual relationships and end up having to use imagination as a source of evidence. Or should I perhaps disregard imaginary situations and consider only real-life situations?

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I think excitement/attentiveness is a good descriptor of the feeling. I put strong for the enthusiasm aspect, and for medium for physical arousal... since I don't really feel much going on otherwise. ;) (No reason for this to be bold...)

The last question was the most difficult to answer in my opinion, might want to scrap that one in your analysis..

I find the questions really interesting to think about - but difficult to answer accurately. I have little experience of actual relationships and end up having to use imagination as a source of evidence. Or should I perhaps disregard imaginary situations and consider only real-life situations?

Since I haven't had an actual partner, I did answer with what I imagined it would be like. Since I have other close relationships as reference points, my answer was probably very accurate in regards to how I would feel towards a partner.

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I find the questions really interesting to think about - but difficult to answer accurately. I have little experience of actual relationships and end up having to use imagination as a source of evidence. Or should I perhaps disregard imaginary situations and consider only real-life situations?

Good point.. maybe all questions should be optional so that you can leave a question out if you can't answer it because of no experience. For the time being, for the non-optional questions, either make a guess, or select never.

EDIT: All questions are now optional, if you think you can't make a guess, just leave the question out.

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Tarfeather had spoken with me prior to posting this survey. I have approved of advertising this survey under the student exception as it is for personal curiosity rather than formal publishing.

Steph
Dedicated Research Contact

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nerdperson777

I feel like there should be something done with that last question. Just that sometimes gender identity matters.

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I feel like there should be something done with that last question. Just that sometimes gender identity matters.

Absolutely, gender does matter. I wanted to put a bunch such optional questions in there, but I didn't want to go over the 10 question limit. The reason I went for biological sex instead of gender is that in all likelihood, gender would turn out to be a self-fulfilling prophecy. Those who answer the questions in a way that fits male gender stereotypes probably would also be more likely to have male gender, for instance. So since I'm more interested in the biology/neurology of it, I put the biological sex as question instead. Plus if I put gender, somebody will complain because I didn't include theirs.. ~_~

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Autumn Season

The question

When you look at a very attractive person, do you sometimes experience..?

was a moment of surprise or maybe an ace moment for me. "Do people really react so strongly to appearance?" I do appreciate beauty very much, but that's just a passive feeling, nothing I would have the urge to act on. :O

In comparison, seeing a cat makes me want to walk up to it and stroke/ cuddle/ talk to/ stare at/ ... it.

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Submitted. I'm interested to see the results.

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Submitted! I too am curious about the results :)

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Thanks for making the questions optional. I've now answered the ones I can. :)

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Oh wow, this is a lot more difficult than I expected.. Trying to get the clusterer to spit out nice clusters, but apart from the obvious, there isn't that much interesting structure. Might mean I'm doing something wrong, or maybe things really are that random with regards to the questions I asked. Well, I'll share the observations I've made so far..

About 40% of the responses basically boil down to this:

IRkX9nk.png?1

There is a lot of variety in there, but these people answered almost all the questions with no/never. The variety comes from which questions they didn't answer no/never to, but there's not much structure to that, except that there are many there who value emotional proximity to friends highly. It's interesting that about 80% of them can consider people attractive, but typically they won't react strongly to seeing an attractive person.

Then there's a very sizable group (maybe 40% or so) who seem to be very partner-oriented. Most of them would like to be in a relationship and can develop crushes, but either don't seem to need much outside of that, or their partner takes priority, both emotionally and in other ways. Some of these people seem to be demi-sexual, as they report to have strong desire for sexual activity with their partner. But the clustering algorithm didn't separate demi-sexuals from "demi-sensuals", so I wonder how much of a difference there really is.

Only 20% seem to have a high amount of desire for human contact in general. Half of them (10% total) makes up a group who tend to have crushes, have higher libido, and enjoy emotional as well as sensual contact with others, both friends and partner.

The other half reports they don't tend to have crushes, but they still desire a relationship. They seem to desire emotional proximity / sensuality / sexuality just as much as the group who do experience crushes.

Note that I haven't verified anything of what I said above, it's mostly a result of carefully looking at the groups of data the algorithm spat out, not calculating actual percentages.

The two 40% groups somewhat represent aromantic asexuals, and partner-focused romantic asexuals as well as demi-sexuals (these seem to be closely related, at least with regards to the questions in my survey).

So the other 20% are pretty interesting, particularly those who don't develop crushes. If someone places high importance on emotional proximity, sensuality, sometimes even sexuality, they should be distinguished from the "prevalent" kind of aro/ace.

Anyway, I'm afraid I've already wasted too much time with this.. Going to have to focus on uni for the next few weeks. But this is certainly some interesting data to work with, and I might continue when I have time again.

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About 40% of the responses basically boil down to this:

IRkX9nk.png?1

darn, I knew I shouldn't have attached that portrait of myself alongside my response. Now the whole internet will know my lurid sex life.

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That was kind of interestng. In a "made me think about things" sort of way. I was surprised by some of my answers actually, lol.

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This was a little difficult for me to answer as I am asexual homosensual and heteroromantic and so my responses differ defending on which sex you're talking about/I'm thinking about

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Submitted and interesting findings...

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