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Research Request: Personality and Sexual Behaviour


kelico

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We have received the following research request from Giulia Fioravanti:

 

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I am an Assistant Professor in Clinical Psychology at the University of Florence, Italy. We are conducting a study on personality and sexual behaviors. The online survey is for adults and takes about 20 minutes to complete. I kindly ask you for a few minutes of your time to fill out the ANONYMOUS survey at the following link, where you will also find all research information and my personal contact.

 

https://docs.google.com/forms/d/1WP-PbY3mDssBNp-IjkzMmh7mHcbDo2wi-z1stSHWy6A/edit

 

This study has been approved by the Research Approval Board. 

 

Edit: This study is currently under further discussion by the Research Approval Board. Please read below for concerns raised by members. 

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I'm not sure how I feel about this one. A lot of the questions seemed to be trying to lead you into a personality quirk. I'm probably a decent baseline, as I'm neurotypical and my life is rather quiet, my relationships healthy, etc. But for instance, in the part where it talks about depending emotionally on people vs. independence, there was very little room for an answer like "I prefer being self-sufficient, however I like emotionally connecting with people and will lean on them from time to time."

 

Likewise, in the section about how someone might describe themselves, I kept selecting "Very False or Often False" because I'm a pretty balanced person and the questions seemed to be looking for people with somewhat anti-social tendencies; people who are cooped up in their own heads, or think they're somehow "special."

 

I also wish I could have specified further when it asked about religious upbringing. Without further clarification it would be easy to assume that people who have sexual hang-ups and a religious upbringing are mostly stifled by shame/guilt/etc. 

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Filling it right now and it feels weird that it's asking me about facial hair. 😂😂

Also, it's a bit strange that the test assumes everyone has had sex.

 

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I was also not... comfortable with that test. And I think I kinda skew the results, I have a known and treated psychiatric disorder, so some of those questions are more than a little familiar. My answers reflect my feelings on meds. Good luck with the study.

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Oof. There are some serious issues with this one.

For one, the fact that they wouldn't allow any comments or suggestions at the end.

 

They call it a survey meant to determine a relationship between personality and sexuality (which is dodgy to begin with, imagine researching a 'gay personality.' But oh well.), and then they ask a lot of questions which are obviously specifically geared towards finding out if the participant has certain mental health conditions! (Namely depression, anxiety, autism, schizophrenia and narcissism, from what I could tell. I may have missed some. There was one which sneakily asks whether you have any experience dissociating too.)

I'm currently going through a depression, and answered the questions on general life outlook and self-worth based on my current state, because that's what was asked of me, but I'd be mortified if this helped solidify the idea that aces are only ace because they're depressed. I was ace before I was depressed, and I will be ace after.

Gearing these questions at mental health while claiming to determine personality feels very sketchy to me.

 

Another issue is that for questions like 'I am aware of internal sensation during sexual activity' and such, there was no way to make it clear that you weren't in any way sexually active. So I had to lie repeatedly, because the question had a red asterisk, so I couldn't skip it.

Like, "how old were you when you first had intercourse" and no option to skip it... I just put a 0 to make it clear that it wasn't a real answer.

 

It also has an issue with not allowing people to click multiple boxes.

For example, one question goes 'What was the gender of the person you fell in love with?'

And the answers were:

  • Male
  • Female
  • Transgender FTM
  • Transgender MTF

What if I fell in love with multiple people of different genders? (Which I did)

What if I fell in love with a nonbinary person? (Which I did)

And why the f are trans women separated from cis women, and trans men from cis men???? 

Why allow me to write in my own gender at the beginning (agender), and then have this bullshit later on? Honestly it pissed me off. You absolutely cannot do this in a survey aimed at aces. So many of us are binary and nonbinary trans. Basic knowledge on trans issues is required if you're going to do this kind of research.

 

And then there was a question asking you how you identify.

  • asexual
  • grey-sexual
  • demi-sexual
  • sex-averse
  • autochorisexual (misspelled!)
  • ficto-sexual

You can identify as literally all of those at the same time, and it would make perfect sense! Why could I only click one box? I'm legitimately three of them!

 

Overall, a very frustrating survey. And simply badly set up. More preliminary research should have been done, and answer options should have been more flexible.

 

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9 minutes ago, Laurann said:

You can identify as literally all of those at the same time, and it would make perfect sense! Why could I only click one box? I'm legitimately three of them!

 

Oh yes, I completely forgot about that one! I was a bit frustrated that I couldn't pick asexual and sex-averse at the same time.

 

12 minutes ago, Zagadka said:

some of those questions are more than a little familiar

The ones at the end rang many bells! They're the classic ones that you use to determine if you're possible asexual. I'd recognise them everywhere. It gave me a bad feeling about the survey, like it's not serious.

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3 minutes ago, Aldis Friedman said:

The ones at the end rang many bells! They're the classic ones that you use to determine if you're possible asexual. I'd recognise them everywhere. It gave me a bad feeling about the survey, like it's not serious.

I think Zagadka was probably talking about the ones that asked you about about how anxious you generally felt (anxiety), about if you still had fun doing anything (depression), if you'd seen or heard things that weren't real (schizophrenia), if you felt you were simply better than others (narcissism) or if you ever felt like the world around you wasn't real, or more real than usual (dissociation).

I didn't have an issue with the ones at the end that determined where you fell on the ace scale.

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2 minutes ago, Laurann said:

I think Zagadka was probably talking about the ones that asked you about about how anxious you generally felt (anxiety), about if you still had fun doing anything (depression), if you'd seen or heard things that weren't real (schizophrenia), if you felt you were simply better than others (narcissism) or if you ever felt like the world around you wasn't real, or more real than usual (dissociation).

I didn't have an issue with the ones at the end that determined where you fell on the ace scale.

Yes, I understand that. In fact, I got the same impression! It felt really strange and… out of place somehow. I mean, I'm pretty sure sexuality has got nothing to do with that! 😁

I wanted to say that on top of that, I also had problems with the end questions because of how generic they are. I'm sure I've seen them somewhere! All of that made me wonder if the questions have been seriously researched.

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HonoraryJedi

WTF is up with this survey? Why does it keep asking me over and over again if I 1) take dangerous risks or 2) don't care about others feelings 3) experience mindconrol powers(????) 4) is a manipulator or a liar?

like, how many questions about the same thing can they put in there, and why is mind control part of the survey?

 

The constant repetition of questions makes this feel really weird, like they have some specific ideas about what an asexual is and they try really really hard to make you admit that you totally are asocial, or risk your life, or have anger issues or a distorted view of reality (what is up with the telepathy questions?)

 

I did not fill out all of it, there is a lot, and honestly, I don't feel like I trust this.

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FindingTheta

Hard pass.

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1 hour ago, HonoraryJedi said:

WTF is up with this survey? Why does it keep asking me over and over again if I 1) take dangerous risks or 2) don't care about others feelings 3) experience mindconrol powers(????) 4) is a manipulator or a liar?

like, how many questions about the same thing can they put in there, and why is mind control part of the survey?

 

The constant repetition of questions makes this feel really weird, like they have some specific ideas about what an asexual is and they try really really hard to make you admit that you totally are asocial, or risk your life, or have anger issues or a distorted view of reality (what is up with the telepathy questions?)

 

I did not fill out all of it, there is a lot, and honestly, I don't feel like I trust this.

Repetition of similar questions is a technique that is often used, but normally not in such an obvious way.

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Hi all, 

 

I'd like to pass on the above comments to the researcher and would need your permission to do so (it's your words, after all!). The points will be summarised and any identifying information such as usernames will be removed. Would you mind sending me a PM advising whether or not I can provide your feedback? Alternatively, you can contact the researcher directly via email (giulia.fioravanti@unifi.it). 

@Grimalkin @Aldis Friedman @HonoraryJedi @Laurann @FindingTheta @Acing It 

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HonoraryJedi
8 hours ago, Acing It said:

Repetition of similar questions is a technique that is often used, but normally not in such an obvious way.

Do you know the purpose of the technique? What is supposed to be the effect of having many similar questions like that. I'm assuming it is used for a reason. In this case, I just felt like they had a hard angle. I would very much like to know what hypothesis they were working from here.

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4 hours ago, HonoraryJedi said:

Do you know the purpose of the technique? What is supposed to be the effect of having many similar questions like that. I'm assuming it is used for a reason. 

Possibly to avoid people attempting to "game the system" or only pick answers that put them in a good light? Reframing the answers might help prevent them from picking answers they "want" to hear.

 

@Jarle that's fine!

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13 hours ago, Jarle said:

Hi all, 

 

I'd like to pass on the above comments to the researcher and would need your permission to do so (it's your words, after all!). The points will be summarised and any identifying information such as usernames will be removed. Would you mind sending me a PM advising whether or not I can provide your feedback? Alternatively, you can contact the researcher directly via email (giulia.fioravanti@unifi.it). 

@Grimalkin @Aldis Friedman @HonoraryJedi @Laurann @FindingTheta @Acing It 

You may pass on my comment! I give you permission.

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11 hours ago, HonoraryJedi said:

Do you know the purpose of the technique? What is supposed to be the effect of having many similar questions like that. I'm assuming it is used for a reason. In this case, I just felt like they had a hard angle. I would very much like to know what hypothesis they were working from here.

There can be several reasons. One could be to make sure of consistency between the answers of the same responder. Another could be to make sure a point gets across clearly and consistently as language can be understood differently by different people, especially if they are from different countries, cultures, backgrounds etc...

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Hi all, 

 

I've passed on your feedback to the researcher and will let you know if we get a response. This study is currently under further discussion by the Research Approval Board. 

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