Pramana Posted February 7, 2018 Share Posted February 7, 2018 I have been comparing demographic data regarding asexuality, and have noticed a trend where national population surveys are showing prevalence rates from 0.4-1.0%, while American college campus surveys are generating significantly higher numbers. The 2014 UC Campus Climate Assessment Project found that 4.6% of students indicated an asexual orientation (likely including gray/demisexuals). Meanwhile, the American College Health Association National College Health Assessment has published four different demographic surveys with data pools from 2015-2017, all finding a prevalence rate for asexuality of around 5-6% (also likely including gray/demisexuals), making it the most common orientation after heterosexuality. Bisexuality is a close second, with prevalence rates similarly around 5-6%. By comparison, numbers for gay and lesbian respondents are around 1-2%, about the same as the prevalence rate for pansexuality in these surveys.By comparison, the NATSAL-1 British national probability survey found a prevalence rate of 1.0% for those reporting a lifelong absence of sexual attraction, while the NATSAL-2 found a lower rate of 0.5%. Meanwhile, the New Zealand Attitudes and Values Study found a prevalence rate for self-identified asexuals (including gray/demisexuals) of 0.4%.Commonly cited demographic estimates for the combined numbers of gay, lesbian, and bisexual people suggest a population prevalence rate of 1-4%. Therefore, what we see from the college campus data are numbers of gays and lesbians which cohere with population averages, but significantly higher numbers of bi/pansexuals and asexuals.http://campusclimate.ucop.edu/_common/files/pdf-climate/ucsystem-full-report.pdfhttp://www.acha-ncha.org/reports_ACHA-NCHAIIc.html Link to post Share on other sites
Philip027 Posted February 7, 2018 Share Posted February 7, 2018 Quote a prevalence rate for asexuality of around 5-6% (also likely including gray/demisexuals) More like "certainly including" Too bad those things aren't asexuality. Link to post Share on other sites
Pramana Posted February 7, 2018 Author Share Posted February 7, 2018 1 minute ago, Philip027 said: More like "certainly including" Too bad those things aren't asexuality. What I find most interesting though is that the New Zealand national survey which explicitly included gray-asexuality and demisexuality still only returned a combined prevalence rate of 0.4%. Link to post Share on other sites
Philip027 Posted February 7, 2018 Share Posted February 7, 2018 I never believed asexuality was as common as 1% to begin with (it may not seem that common at first glance, but with how many people there are in the world, 1% is actually a substantial amount), so a result that low doesn't surprise me. Link to post Share on other sites
Pramana Posted February 7, 2018 Author Share Posted February 7, 2018 8 minutes ago, Philip027 said: I never believed asexuality was as common as 1% to begin with (it may not seem that common at first glance, but with how many people there are in the world, 1% is actually a substantial amount), so a result that low doesn't surprise me. I would take an educated guess that the population prevalence rate is around 0.5% (maybe 1.0% including gray areas), although it is hard to say without more data. Plus other factors might influence what people decide to report to researchers. For example, the authors of an article regarding the NATSAL-2 survey (which returned a 0.5% figure) conclude:“We also found some evidence for differences by ethnicity. Absence of sexual attraction was more commonly reported among respondents of Indian and Pakistani ethnic origin, who made up 12.2% men and 23.2% of women without sexual attraction (in contrast to 2.7% and 2.8% of those who experienced sexual attraction). The differences seemed to be more pronounced among women, and among Pakistani respondents compared to Indian respondents. While we found no evidence for a difference in the proportions who belonged to a religion (compared to having no religion), there were significant differences between religious affiliations, among women. Of note, a larger proportion of respondents reporting an absence of sexual attraction were Muslim (11.6% versus 2.1% among men; 19.2% versus 2.1% among women), while a smaller proportion reported a Christian-based faith (27.5% versus 35.7% among men; 33.7% versus 45.5% among women).” Catherine R.H. Aicken, Catherine H. Mercer, Jackie A. Cassel, “Who Reports Absence of Sexual Attraction in Britain?: Evidence from National Probability Surveys” Psychology & Sexuality 4:2 (2013): 125. Link to post Share on other sites
Snao Cone Posted February 7, 2018 Share Posted February 7, 2018 I would have responded to a sexual orientation question on a survey differently in my college years than I would now, and also differently in my teen years. This isn't because of fluidity in disposition, but knowledge and experience. So, I think a longitudinal study that checks in on this would produce interesting results as well. Link to post Share on other sites
Snao Cone Posted February 7, 2018 Share Posted February 7, 2018 Oh, also: culture and life experience may greatly influence how many people identify as grey or demi. College students who have rarely experienced any sexual feelings or who don't develop them independent of a close bond may feel more distance from the average college student than they will from the average adult after that life stage. It would be really interesting to see figures on that sort of thing. Link to post Share on other sites
lazypanda Posted February 7, 2018 Share Posted February 7, 2018 I need to move to america.... Link to post Share on other sites
Zebrafinch Posted February 7, 2018 Share Posted February 7, 2018 That's high. A lot higher than I'd expect. Went and had a look at the asexual census 2015, as I was curious about the ratio of grey-aces to asexuals. 64.3% were asexual, 14.5% were demi and 21.2% were grey. On romantic orientations 19% were aro. Link to post Share on other sites
Pramana Posted February 7, 2018 Author Share Posted February 7, 2018 7 minutes ago, Zebrafinch said: That's high. A lot higher than I'd expect. Went and had a look at the asexual census 2015, as I was curious about the ratio of grey-aces to asexuals. 64.3% were asexual, 14.5% were demi and 21.2% were grey. On romantic orientations 19% were aro. Both the 2014 and 2015 community censuses showed smaller numbers of grey-aces, while the New Zealand national probability survey plus an online survey published in 2016 by Walton/Lykins/Bhullar each showed only a handful of grey-aces. I had thought there would be more people in the grey-area, but all the studies I'm aware of to date based on self-identification which distinguish between the categories have produced the opposite result. Link to post Share on other sites
daveb Posted February 7, 2018 Share Posted February 7, 2018 I also wonder if college students are more likely to know about asexuality than the general population? It's hard to identify as something if you are unfamiliar with the concept. Age may also play a factor, in that younger people seem to be more likely to be aware of asexuality. Interesting though. Maybe there really are more asexuals among college students, and there are other correlating factors (cultural, social, physical, etc.)? Link to post Share on other sites
Philip027 Posted February 7, 2018 Share Posted February 7, 2018 I think a large part of it is people equating "not having time for sex/relationships" (as a result of academics) to "being asexual", considering how much of the populace believes asexuality to be a conscious choice you can make. Link to post Share on other sites
LeChat Posted February 8, 2018 Share Posted February 8, 2018 1 hour ago, daveb said: I also wonder if colleges students are more likely to know about asexuality than the general population? It's hard to identify as something if you are unfamiliar with the concept. Age may also play a factor, in that younger people seem to be more likely to be aware of asexuality. Interesting though. Maybe there really are more asexuals among college students, and there are other correlating factors (cultural, social, physical, etc.)? Yes. Plus, around 33.4% of American adults 25+ said in a survey that they have at least a bachelor's degree, which isn't most of the population. http://thehill.com/homenews/state-watch/326995-census-more-americans-have-college-degrees-than-ever-before So, the 5-6% percentage of college students in Pramana's article isn't necessarily indicative of the whole U.S. population. Link to post Share on other sites
Cnyb Posted February 8, 2018 Share Posted February 8, 2018 I'd be more interested in a survey that asked questions about the practical situations people find themselves in regarding sex, and then asked about attitudes towards those situations. I.e., looking for long term partner to one day be married, or not, or looking for hookup partner, or not, and, how much they identify with it or see it as an important issue personally, i.e., is the attitude "gotta get married or mom will freak out" or is the attitude "I really really want to be married to someone" or is the attitude "I'm probably never getting married so what difference does it make", or is the attitude "I don't want to be married because I'm not interested in having a lifelong sexual partner", similarly, if not dating, why not, not so interested in sex is an interesting attitude. Behavior and attitudes about the behaviors says more to me than questions about feelings, attractions, and identities. Link to post Share on other sites
Sally Posted February 8, 2018 Share Posted February 8, 2018 5 hours ago, daveb said: It's hard to identify as something if you are unfamiliar with the concept. Exactly. I now know that I've been asexual all my life, but if I'd been asked that question on a survey when I was 30 years old, I wouldn't have answered that I was asexual unless I'd read a complete description of asexuality. For decades I just assumed that I was not doing things the right way and eventually I'd get better at it. Link to post Share on other sites
RoseGoesToYale Posted February 8, 2018 Share Posted February 8, 2018 I'm surprised the numbers were higher for asexual than lesbian and gay. Could be a number of social/logistic reasons, to be sure. In the results, UC noted they had a 27% response rate, so I wonder how the numbers would change if they got a higher response rate (they'd never get 100%, but I bet they could get it up to at least 50%). Still, 4000+ students is significant. Hard to say what it all means yet... maybe I should start an ace club at my school... Link to post Share on other sites
Acing It Posted February 8, 2018 Share Posted February 8, 2018 15 minutes ago, RoseGoesToYale said: I'm surprised the numbers were higher for asexual than lesbian and gay. Could be a number of social/logistic reasons, to be sure. In the results, UC noted they had a 27% response rate, so I wonder how the numbers would change if they got a higher response rate (they'd never get 100%, but I bet they could get it up to at least 50%). Still, 4000+ students is significant. Hard to say what it all means yet... maybe I should start an ace club at my school... I think that's because asexuality is still largely misunderstood or misinterpreted, unlike lesbian and gay. As someone said above, some people understand asexuality to be a choice, like celibacy or not having a relationship for a while. Link to post Share on other sites
Guest Posted February 8, 2018 Share Posted February 8, 2018 13 minutes ago, Acing It said: I think that's because asexuality is still largely misunderstood or misinterpreted, unlike lesbian and gay. As someone said above, some people understand asexuality to be a choice, like celibacy or not having a relationship for a while. Yeah that's the exact reason why the numbers appear so high. It's a direct result of the asexual community refusing to actually define asexuality beyond 'lack of sexual attraction' (which they then refuse to explain further). If you ask 12 different asexual-identifying college kids what asexuality is, you'll get 12 different answers if you then go and ask them to try to explain what sexual attraction is like for sexual people. A lot of their ideas will be based on misconceptions (perpetuated continuously throughout the asexual community) and general lack of 'real' sexual experience which is very common at that age in that environment. Believe me, in 10 years time the vast majority of kids who answered that survey will have very, very different answers and in all likelihood will not be identifying as asexual. If the general understanding of the term 'lesbian' was ''a woman who thinks women are pretty and sometimes maybe desires to have sex with them but can also desire sex with men just as much, but can also be someone who only desires sex with men, or someone who only desires sex with women, but can sometimes be other things depending on how you personally want to define what sexual attraction means'' (which is quite literally the state that asexuality is in right now) you'd have a LOT more people (even a lot of non-trans males I'm sure, lol) identifying as lesbian in those surveys. However, everyone knows exactly what gay and lesbian (and straight, and bi) mean - they're defined as sexual attraction to a specific gender/s but the vast majority of the population knows instinctively that what sexual attraction means in that particular context is 'lesbian women desires sexual intimacy with other women, homosexual men desire sexual intimacy with other men, straight people desire sexual intimacy with people of a different gender to what they are, bisexual people can desire sexual intimacy with people of the same gender' and so on and so forth. Asexuality though is the special identity that can be defined as anything you want it to be, so you get to use a special label and can feel part of a unique group regardless of how much experience you've had, who you desire sex with, or how you desire sex with them. Yay for the ace card (and of course I'm not saying there aren't 'actual' asexuals out there, of course there are!! just the vast majority of respondents on those surveys who claimed to be asexual would have been identifying as such based on a lack of understanding and experience as to what it actually means to be a 'normal sexual person'.) Link to post Share on other sites
plasticapollos Posted February 8, 2018 Share Posted February 8, 2018 Uh excuse me but where are these people?!?! I swear there's like.. two of us at a University of 20,000. And I just met the other one yesterday out of FOUR YEARS Can we get an ace call or something so I know where to start looking for these people?! Link to post Share on other sites
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