BDSM Safewords survey

Thanks to everyone who took part in the BDSM Safewords survey. This page gives basic details of who took part, gender, age, location, etc – and basics concerning respondents sexuality and BDSM preferences. It will contain links to all the articles on various aspects of the survey, as I write them.

This is a much more detailed survey than the polldaddy poll I did on this blog in August last year – but you may wish to see the results of that, which are here.

The article that started it all off (a re-edited version of an old Informed Consent blog is here).

This page

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

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

SAFEWORD SURVEY ARTICLES

Will be linked here as they are written:

• Safeword Survey – who uses them with their principal partners
• Safeword survey – who uses them with play partners
• Safeword survey – comments on safeword use with principal and play partners
• BDSM safeword survey: Are safewords unhelpful for partners who know each other well?
• BDSM safeword survey – does age alter behaviour?
• Safeword Survey – BDSM People who like “pain” and safewords
• Safeword Survey – Are safewords essential in all BDSM transactions?
• Safeword Survey – Are safewords essential in BDSM play
• Safeword Survey – Are safewords essential in BDSM punishment
• Safeword Survey – do safewords make play feel artificial
• Safeword survey – dataset for download

Gathering data

Data was gathered between 19 January 2013 and 3 February 2013.
There were 557 respondents recruited through the websites Informed Consent, fetbook, fetlife and through this blog.
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.

Oddities.

There were peculiarities with some of the data, so I have deleted a few records from the dataset. For examle, I have eliminated those records where the respondent only answered the demographic questions.

I have also eliminated multiple responses from the same TCP/IP address and one or two stranger responses, such as the person whose sexuality was “Cod”, the people who had had 557,774,456, 100,000 and 9,800 play partners in the last 12 months and, amongst a few others, the retired 18-20 year old and the 18-20 year old who had left full-time education at 16 and had a doctorate.

This removed 24 records, leaving me with 533 to analyse. That means each record represents 0.19% of the sample.

DEMOGRAPHICS

The demographic information below is, at the moment, based on the entire sample of 557. Future analyses will be based on the 533 full or valid records. I think this is ok, because the eliminated part of the sample represents only 4.3% of the whole and most of these were people who gave demographic info but did not complete the survey.

Country of Origin: 81% of the sample said they came from the UK, 14% from the US and 5% from other countries (the largest groupings being the Netherlands and Canada.

Gender: 57% said they were female, 41% male and 2.2% expressed another preference. I won’t be analysing the other preferences separately, there were too few responses and, of those remaining in the sample, almost all chose a unique description of their gender choice.

Age: The breakdown was as follows:

• 18-20 – 2%
• 21-29 – 14%
• 30-39 – 28%
• 40-49 – 30%
• 50-59 – 19%
• 60-69 – 5%
• 70+ – 1%

Education – responses were:

• Left school at sixteen – 8%
• Left school at 18 or 19 – 14%
• Tertiary Education below degree level – 19%
• First degree – 35%
• Postgraduate degree – 20%
• Doctorate or higher – 4%

Employment status – people said:

• In full-time education – 8%
• Working 1-34 hours per week – 58%
• Not employed, looking for work – 5%
• Not employed, NOT looking for work – 5%
• Retired – 6%
• Disabled, not able to work – 3%

SEXUALITY AND BDSM

Sexuality. Respondents identified as follows:

• Heterosexual – 71%
• Homosexual – 5%
• Bisexual – 25%

BDSM orientation. Responses were as follows:

• Top/Dominant – 28%
• Bottom/submissive – 54%
• Switch – 18%

BDSM component. People said:

• Sadist/masochist – 18%
• Dominant/submissive 65%
• Master/slave – 17%

Related articles

• Safewords – new, more detailed poll – Please take part (belasarius.com)
• One In Three Kinksters Reports A Consent Violation (yesmeansyesblog.wordpress.com)