BDSM and Education Survey

Thanks to everyone who took part in the BDSM and education survey that i did back in June 2012.

It was prompted by this thread on the old Informed Consent website.

This page gives basic details of who took part, gender, age, etc – and respondents’ BDSM preferences. It will contain links to all the articles on various aspects of the survey, as I write them.

If you want to do your own analysis, you can get a download of the dataset from this page.

I’ve published some details of this survey before (on Informed Consent) – see this link:

This page

This page will contain links to all the articles I publish on the survey over the next  days and weeks.

It also, below, contains information about the demographics of the people who responded, including some aspects of their sexuality and BDSM orientation and components.

BDSM & EDUCATION SURVEY ARTICLES

Will be linked here as they are written:

• BDSM and Education Survey – Kinksters vs the rest

Gathering data

Data was gathered in June 2012. There were 504 respondents recruited through the websites Informed Consent and Fetlife.

There was no attempt to recruit a sample scientifically – this is simple what more than 500 people active on BDSM websites said about their relationships, dynamics and attitudes to safewords.

DEMOGRAPHICS

The demographic information below is, based on the entire sample of 504. No respondents skipped any of the questions.

Gender: 56% said they were female, 44% male: I didn’t ask about other preferences – I did in surveys I’ve done since.

Age: The breakdown was as follows:

• 17 or younger – 1%
• 18-20 – 1%
• 21-29 – 16%
• 30-39 – 24%
• 40-49 – 31%
• 50-59 – 21%
• 60 or older – 7%

(these responses are broadly similar to those i’ve had from other surveys

Education – responses were:

• Left school at sixteen or earlier – 8%
• Left school at 18- 10%
• Tertiary Education below degree level – 17%
• First degree – 35%
• Postgraduate degree – 29%

These results are broadly similar to other surveys I’ve done with two exceptions: In this survey I did not record “Doctorate or Higher” (but the total for postgraduates is higher than in other surveys – so the data seems consistent). Also, the percentage leaving school at 18 is lower (by roughly a third to two fifths). In later surveys, on advice. I changed the question to “Left school at 18 or 19”: No idea whether this had any effect.

Employment status – people said:

• Employed, working 40 or more hours per week – 37%
• Working 1-39 hours per week – 37%
• Not employed, looking for work – 8%
• Not employed, NOT looking for work – 7%
• Retired – 6%
• Disabled, not able to work – 4%

This question changed in later surveys – so proportions of employed people are very different. Proportions in not working, retired and disabled categories are similar.

BDSM orientation. Responses were as follows:

• Top/Dominant – 30%
• Bottom/submissive – 53%
• Switch – 17%

These proportions are similar to other surveys.