Site icon Dr. Elisabeth "Eli" Sheff

Help test these questions on non-monogamies?

Dr. Elisabeth "Eli" Sheff, PhD, CASA, CSE

One of the questions I get asked repeatedly is how many polyamorists there are in the US, and I always have to answer “We don’t know.” Without an accurate sample of polyamorists in the US, there is no way to say how many polys there really are. The problem is getting an accurate or statistically representative sample — something that is challenging enough that no one has done it yet.   

 

Earlier this year I was looking for materials to support an application for the Mather grant on healthy aging when I stumbled across a call for submissions for the 2016 General Social Survey (GSS), a yearly survey of a random sample of adults in the US that asks about social attitudes and beliefs. Usually it takes at least tens of thousands of dollars to purchase a question on any survey that goes out to a sample of people who represent the entire US. This time, however, the GSS was accepting unfunded submissions for free and would consider a small number of the flood for inclusion in the 2016 General Social Survey. The PolyResearchers Yahoo group had been talking about trying to purchase a question on a nationally representative survey for years, but we could never come up with the money so it had never materialized.

 

With only a few weeks until the deadline, I contacted PolyResearchers the moment I found the call for submissions and by the end of the day we had a team of folks (Co PI’s Jennifer Harman and Elisabeth Sheff with Derrell Cox, Jim Fleckenstein, Tracey Gendron, and Mimi Schippers) taking on the Herculean task of writing a module in such a brief time. Through our combined efforts, and in collaboration with the PolyResearchers list, we designed a module to measure the incidence of and attitudes towards non-monogamies in the United States.

 

Unfunded questions receive an enormous number of submissions, and we knew from the beginning that it was highly unlikely for the  non-monogamies module to be selected. Ultimately the GSS selection committee rejected the non-monogamies module because they were concerned that there would not be enough non-monogamists in their sample to allow for meaningful analysis. Another thing that contributed to the rejection of the module is that it has not been tested — we created it especially for the General Social Survey and were not able to test it outside of online workshopping with the PolyResearchers. Testing survey questions is quite important because it lets researchers know if they are actually measuring the concept they mean to be measuring and not accidentally measuring something else (validity), and that the questions measure that thing accurately and consistently over time and in different situations/populations (reliability). 

 

We have not given up, though, and the research team hopes to test the module in a number of settings. Are you willing to help? If so, please copy the module below, past it in to a document, answer the questions, provide any additional feedback on user-friendly language or what is missing or whatever you think would make the questions more accurate, and email me your response at drelisheff@gmail.com. This module was designed for the US, but I am also interested in how these questions might be received in other nations so please feel free to comment from anywhere in the world. 

 

As always, this is completely voluntary and I will keep your responses confidential. When I write about the results, I will anonymize the data so that names are not associated with the answers people provided. 

 

Thanks for reading, and please let me know what you think of these questions. Unfortunately, the formatting did not translate so the answer categories lost their A, B, C labeling and replaced with bullets. Please bear with my technical difficulties, I hope to have a better version up and running soon. 

 

GENERAL SOCIAL SURVEY NON-MONOGAMIES MODULE 

This question would be a follow up to General Social Survey question 1555. “Have you ever had sex with someone other than your husband or wife while you were married?”

 

If Yes, “Did your spouse know about it at the time?”

 

If Yes, “Did s/he consent to your activity?”

 

Module Questions

 

[Note: the next questions have skip patterns to limit survey time and gather more detailed information on different types of non-monogamies. Formatting can of course be tailored to match the GSS]

 

  1. Thinking back over your sexual/romantic relationship history (that is, all relationships that included a romantic intent and held the possibility of including sexuality, even if sexual activity did not actually take place in that relationship for whatever reason), have you ever (select all that apply):

 

  1. (if #1A or #1B): Over the last 12 months, how many multiple simultaneous romantic and/or sexual partners have you had a relationship with?

 

  1. (If #1A or #1B was selected): From the following terms, which one best describes your current relationship orientation/practices?

 

 

  1. (if #3A, 3B, 3C, or 3E was selected): Have you ever been discriminated against (e.g., legally, socially) because of your relationship orientation (e.g,., swinging, polyamory, polygamy)?

 

If yes, in what ways? (select all that apply)

 

  1. Within the past 12 months, have you:

 

 

  1. (If they selected #5C or 5D): What was the main reason for your decision to not pursue multiple, simultaneous sexual/romantic relationships?
  1. People choose to organize their sexual and romantic lives in many different ways. We’re interested in hearing about your feelings regarding some of the ways people practice relationships. In each case, we’d like you to say whether you find the practice always wrong, almost always wrong, sometimes wrong, or not wrong at all.

 

 

 

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