Insecure Attachment, Asexuality, Social Connectedness and Interpersonal Problems

[Jarle]

Hi all, 

 

We received the following request from Alana Bronner from the University of North Texas: 

Quote

Dear AVEN Members,

My name is Alana Bronner ,and I am a senior undergraduate student at the University of North Texas (UNT) who identifies as asexual. I am cordially inviting you to participate in my honors thesis research project, “Insecure Attachment, Asexuality, Social Connectedness, and Interpersonal Problems”. This study is supervised by Chiachih DC Wang, PhD., an Associate Professor in the UNT Department of Psychology at UNT and its research protocol has been approved by UNT IRB.

The purpose of this study is to better understand the relationship among attachment style, asexuality, social connectedness, and interpersonal problems. You may want to participate in this study if you want to share how your level of asexuality has affected interpersonal problems in your life. Participants should not have taken this survey before, be above 18 years of age, and be asexual, heterosexual, or non-heterosexual.

This study uses an online survey (see the link below) to gather your responses to several self-report psychological instruments. After reading the consent notice page and clicking on the “I agree to participate” option, you will be directed to a research questionnaire. The online questionnaire includes demographic items and multiple individual scales measuring the variables
of interest. This online survey should take about 30 minutes to complete. This research study is not expected to pose any additional risks beyond what you would normally experience in your regular everyday life. Your email address will be collected should you wish to enter into a chance to win a gift card as compensation for completing the survey. Your email address will not be linked to your survey responses in any way in order to protect your confidentiality. Winners will be notified by email at the conclusion of data collection.

If interested in getting more detailed information about this study, please click on the link below to read the informed consent notice of the study. Please feel free to contact me at alanabronner@my.unt.edu and/or the faculty supervisor, Dr. Wang at chiachih.wang@unt.edu for any questions you may have about this study.

https://unt.az1.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_e9tPSpNZN9YB2Ml

 

Thank you so much for your time and consideration.

 

Best,
Alana Bronner

This study has been approved by the Research Approval Board. 

[PrimeJelly]

I took the survey but I did encounter some grammar mistakes and other problems. In one question, it says to specify your romantic orientation twice even though one should ask about sexual orientation. Another issue is that for some answers that have "other" and (specify) with an answer box, some of them have an answer box missing. Also in one question it asks to select two answers yet when I try to do that, I can only select one answer at a time.

[AlanaMarie]

44 minutes ago, PrimeJelly said:

I took the survey but I did encounter some grammar mistakes and other problems. In one question, it says to specify your romantic orientation twice even though one should ask about sexual orientation. Another issue is that for some answers that have "other" and (specify) with an answer box, some of them have an answer box missing. Also in one question it asks to select two answers yet when I try to do that, I can only select one answer at a time.

Hi! I'm the student researcher in charge of this study,

 

Thank you so much for making me aware of the issues with the study, I tried to make sure that there were no issues, however since this is my first time working with an online study some must have slipped through. All of the issues mentioned should be fixed. Thank you again!

[HonoraryJedi]

I filled out the survey.  I hope I should have, these american-university surveys sometimes have a feel to them that they are only for americans but it is never stated clearly.

[Guest]

Having done a psychology & counselling degree (decades ago), it's refreshing that a US study will have non-US and non-student subjects 😁

(One benefit of social media perhaps?!)

 

PS the validity question didn't allow me to do exactly as it requested.  Maybe that was the point, but...

[matt_lock]

And again we have that standard form that asks about asexuality while assuming that the person answering the questions has no clue what asexuality is. And have had sex. Loaded questions are bad. Also frustrated with some other aspects of the phrasing, but that's the fault of the person(s) this surveyor copy/pasted the questions from.

 

Also mildly annoyed that the ethnicity form assumes you're American.

 

Also, I want to point out that no I'm not connected to people in meatspace, yes I have interpersonal problems. However, none of that has anything to do with my asexuality. Now my trauma, neurodivergence and sensory issues on the other hand...

 

I am worried about how this survey does not seem to be investigating possible confounding variables.

[BeakLove]

Hi there. I took your survey, hopefully I can offer some feedback/considerations:

• "What is your country of residence and how long have you resided there?" - it's generally poor form from a data collection point of view to ask two questions as one.
• The college student/full time job question is confusing and quite poorly-worded. Surely you would be better to ask about education, marital status, childhood socio-economic as separate questions depending on what information you actually want to get.
• Perhaps this is just me as a non-American but I find the "upper middle class", "middle class" etc. choices very confusing. Maybe giving specific income brackets for household would be better. You should probably reference existing studies and surveys when designing your own one. You should also consider whether this demography is actually relevant for a survey which will probably have a modest-at-best response rate. 
• "What is your current relationship status?" - the choices aren't asking about current status but your overall love life history. Perhaps previous and current should be separate questions. 
• I know it's standard to include "prefer not to say" options for sensitive questions, but why offer one for sexual orientation (which is crucial to your research) and not one for less important, but still personal questions like race or socio-economic status? 
• The "what percentage of your friends are X,Y,Z" - this is quite a fussy and difficult question to answer! I'd imagine many people would likely skip this question. And without the quantum of friends, is the percentage actually meaningful? For example, a person with one friends, is going to put 100% in one of those boxes and zero in the other. Is rotten quantitative data more useful to you than qualitative data such as "do you have any friends or family who identify as X,Y,Z"? 
• What's the difference between "the non-family members who I usually interact with or hang out with socially" and "people who I consider my friends"? Surely this excludes family members? Did you mean to do that?
• The agree/disagree format is clumsy for questions that include a frequency element e.g. "I often worry..." - is frequency important here? If so, ask it separately. This is probably the biggest suggestion I would make: be careful to only ask one thing per question and be very clear on what it is you're trying to ascertain. 
• The vertical layout makes the number of questions feel much more intimidating - I understand perhaps you don't have complete control over that but it makes the quiz seem far longer than it is. 
• A lot of the questions in the friendship section are very samey - I don't know if this is deliberate but it's very hard to focus. 
• "Sex has no place in my life" - with an agree/disagree scale is confusing. 
• Watch out for typos!

Best of luck with your research project and I hope that these comments can help with your future survey design since it seems like that's probably going to be important in your ongoing research. 

[SpirallingSnowy]

Hi all,  don’t forget this study is still ongoing - the researcher would love to get some more responses from AVEN as they are trying to have close to 50/50 as far Ace/non ace responses go. 
 

Thanks!