You know, I want numbers.

[sciatrix]

I really, really want to know more about the make-up of asexual communities. Not just because it would be interesting, but because it would be really useful to have that information when it comes to thinking about ways to more effectively help our community.

I mean, there's the 2008 AVEN poll that's pretty big, and that gets cited a lot, and there's the 2004 Bogaert demographics survey, but the thing is that asexual communities have changed dramatically even in just the past year with the AVEN exodus, let alone in the past three years or the past seven years. I'd like to see gender identity numbers now, just to start with; I know the visibility of transgender aces, especially nonbinary aces, has skyrocketed in the past two years.

And I want to see something that's accessible to everyone regardless of their log-in status, not another freaking AVEN poll or something specific to one format of community.

Huh. Is this worth trying to set up, I wonder? There's been a couple of interesting things done by the Asexual Sexologist, but she doesn't seem to be setting up monthly polls anymore at the moment. And anyway, I'd want the raw data, personally--I like playing with numbers and I like having charts to show people.

What demographic questions would be good to see? Offhand, I want to know about things like levels of suicidal ideation, romantic orientation identity breakdowns, relative numbers of asexuals, demis, grey-As and people who identify as sexual in the asexual community, breakdowns of gender identity and trans* identity, age people first identified as asexual vs. age people first found the asexual community, that sort of thing.

And also, what would be the most effective way to send something like this around to as many people as possible? If I'm going to try to get this set up at some point, I'd want it to be properly pan-community, not just DW-specific or tumblr-specific or AVEN-specific. That's the biggest flaw I've seen among so many "pan-community" asexual initiatives--they don't do a good enough job of reaching multiple people.

Huh. Thoughts? I don't know yet whether I'm going to seriously make this go, but I'd really like to and it doesn't seem like any of the academics are doing anything similar.

Comments

[shiyiya]

Delicious data, do want.

Google has those surveys that feed into google docs spreadsheets, right? I don't know what it takes to embed them, but seems like a useful thing and gives you automatically wel-organised data.

I am too tired and headachey right now for more coherent thoughts than that >_> I'll look at this again after I've slept.

[sciatrix]

Oh, huh, I hadn't known about those--I'd just figured on entering data into spreadsheets manually. (I spend a lot of time doing that for my job anyway, it hadn't occurred to me for some reason that data collected on the Internets doesn't have to be entered into analysis programs by hand... duh, Sci.)

...I do actually think manual data entry is fun in a low-brain sort of way, especially when I get to see the numbers as I go. >> and I don't actually like Google Documents. It's something to think about, though.

[shiyiya]

I am kind of vague about how they work because I haven't used them but thinkgeek uses them for surveys :P and neatly organized data is handy. And you can download google docs as whatever filetype if it's the interface that's the roblem, though there isn't really an cure for the company deciding to be horrid.

[sciatrix]

Nah, it's the interface--I just don't like how it works. Partly this is because I hate change, and partly it's because it's complicated in a stupid sort of way.

[aceeccentric]

My AP Stat class was a long time ago but I would be willing to help with a survey. I guess the best thing to do would be to have it centered on the polling platform and then attempt to promote it everywhere it is possible to promote. Possibly also in non-ace-centered spots, if those were something people had access to, to get people who aren't in ace spaces.

...But also, at the same time, prevent people from trolling the poll :/ I don't even have a clue as to how to sort that out.

[sciatrix]

I agree on centering the survey on the polling platform itself. Choosing a polling platform that isn't a community site itself seems the most likely to collect responses from a variety of spaces--also, choosing a polling platform that doesn't require an account creation. I was looking at surveymonkey but the free version only allows up to ten questions, which might or might not be sufficient. Hm.

Yeah, preventing people from trolling the poll is my biggest worry. :/ It might be potentially possible to screen people out if it's not a multiple choice type of survey by the way they respond to things. I know a little bit about how people screen out obviously insincere results in professional surveys, but not enough to know how to handle the influx of trolling we might possibly get.

[aceeccentric]

Oh, hmm. I can see 10 questions not being enough depending on everything we wanted to collect and in what depth. I guess it would possibly be an option to make more than one survey, and link them in succession, but it might be hard to get people to go through with that.

I know a lot of poll services try to block IP addresses from voting more than once, which might cut down a little bit. But other than people being obvious in their answers about being insincere (possibly some fill-in-the-blank questions might help) I'm not educated enough to know what to do about that. Though possibly "large group of people determined to skew results" is not something a lot of pollsters have to worry about.

[kaz]

Ooooh yesssss. And I SO HEAR YOU on the annoying AVEN polls that require login and stuff.

I think the problem with pancommunity is that because we can't very well reach the Centralised List Of All Asexuals, the only thing we can do is reach out to as many people as we know. And that means reaching out to the communities we know. So it'd probably end up being *all* the usual suspects instead of *one* of the usual suspects, you know?

and yeah I have no idea how to advertise this on tumblr without getting trolls. >

[sciatrix]

I--not everyone has an AVEN account! Not everyone wants to go to AVEN as the center of all communities! Not everyone even bothers to look at AVEN, I've met a lot of aces recently who just never touched it and got their community from other places, why is this so hard for people involved with AVEN to comprehend sometimes?

Yeaaaaah, that's the one bad thing about decentralization, it makes people a lot harder to dig out. Really, the only thing I can think of to make this work is to ask people to spread it through word-of-mouth--tell their friends, post on their communities, let people know about it. Hm.

...the more I think about it, the more I think that to really get this up and running we wouldn't really be able to screen out any but the really obvious trolls. On the other hand, I think that if it did attract a truly massive trolling attack instead of a few dedicated people that this would become immediately obvious, so I don't see us unknowingly using mostly falsified data, either. I do think that allowing fill-in-the-blank options for all multiple choice questions would be a good idea, and I think a couple of open answer questions would again help to make people who are filling things out wrong just to be assholes easier to sift out. (Besides, open-ended questions can be really really cool.)

Also, the longer this survey is, the less likely people will be to fill it in wrong just for kicks, I suspect. Well, people will be less likely to fill it out just generally, but

[j_quadrifrons]

This is a brilliant idea and I would happily spread it around to try to get as many people involved as possible. (I know some aces on LJ who are just not really in any kind of asexual community but would gladly fill out a survey if it were put in front of them.)

Two suggestions. One, always have an other option. I hate surveys, but an other option makes it less awful. Two, I'd be interested in seeing some more traditional demographic data in here as well - age/location/upbringing/income. I've always had the sense that the current ace communities are pretty limited class-wise, and I'd like to see if the data supports that.

[sciatrix]

Absolutely agreed on the Other option. I always liked the way the Asexual Sexologist's surveys also always included an explaining box under "other", and I'd probably try to incorporate that.

Agreed on the traditional demographic data, too--it's just not the stuff I'm quite as personally interested in, but it would be good to have anyway. The Bogaert study actually indicated that asexuals skewed lower-income, which raised some eyebrows when I noticed it--a lot of the asexuals I know from online communities tend to be middle class or higher and in particular I know a lot of people who are aiming for academia in various fields. (The fields vary! But I keep running into graduate students and undergraduates like me who are set on graduate school of varying types.) So my anecdata, anyway, would play into your suspicions about class. It would definitely be good to have hard numbers on that, though.

[greenchestnuts]

My suggestion/request would be to have fill-in boxes. Lots of them, in addition to multiple choice boxes. Because being on the asexuality spectrum is something experienced in such a diversity of ways that even if we sat around and brainstormed for a week we couldn't be sure to include them all.