2017 and 2018 Asexual Community Survey Summary Report

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As part of this year’s Ace Week, we are excited to share with you the summary results from the 2017 and 2018 Ace Community Surveys, which we are publishing together in one report:

Publishing two years of data in one report is part of our effort to get up to date with analysis for the most recent surveys. This year we have had an uptick in volunteers, which will hopefully enable us to perform additional data analysis and publish blog posts that offer a deep-dive into specific topics while we begin work on the report for the 2019 Survey.

If you are a researcher or community non-profit institution, you may request access to the data.

Many thanks to everyone who took the survey! We couldn’t have done it without you. If you are interested in participating in the 2020 Ace Community Survey, keep an eye out — we will be releasing a link tomorrow!

Bi Visibility Day report: “Putting the B in A”

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Here at the Ace Community Survey team, intersectionality is an essential part of our identities as it is for those in the broader ace community. This Bi Visibility Day, we have released a visibility report to challenge biphobia and increase bi awareness using data taken from the 2019 Ace Community Survey. Please enjoy and share this infographic to spread awareness of where the bi and ace communities overlap. For more information about Bi Visibility Day which is celebrated every September 23rd, feel free to visit https://bivisibilityday.com/

Bi Visibility Day infographic

Click for the full size!

Special thanks goes out to Lea for data analysis and quality control, and Robin for quality control.

2019 Raw Data Now Available to Researchers

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We are pleased to announce that raw data from the 2019 Ace Community Survey is now available for researchers wishing to perform additional analysis!

If you are a researcher and would like to request a copy of the raw data, please fill out the new data request form here. Raw data from previous years is also available.

If you have any questions, please contact us at asexualcensus@gmail.com.

We need your help: Volunteer for the Survey Team

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This call for volunteers is now closed.  If you’re still very interested, please e-mail us directly.

The Ace Community Survey Team is currently looking for new volunteers, particularly people with programming or technical writing skills.

Our team designs and releases a survey every year, analyzes data, and produces reports.  We seek to understand the diversity and well-being of ace communities, and educate activists and researchers with up to date information.

The major roles that we currently need volunteers for are:

  • Analysis of survey data
    • You will analyze data, producing tables and graphs to be included in reports.
    • You must be familiar with Python, or willing to learn.
  • Improving code infrastructure
    • You will make changes to our code base to improve our workflow.  Python required.
  • Reading and interpreting text responses
    • You will read and classify text responses to survey questions.
    • No programming ability required, but you must be familiar with ace concepts and terminology.
  • Writing reports
    • You will outline topics, organize results into coherent narratives, and provide editing feedback to other writers.
  • Translation of reports into other languages
    • You will translate existing reports to make our results accessible around the world.

Further details will be explained upon joining!  We hold training sessions for new volunteers, and monthly meetings on chat.

Time commitments are flexible depending on your availability at any given part of the year, but we recommend setting aside at least 4-5 hours a month to do work on your own time, plus an additional hour for meetings.

If you’re interested, please fill out this form by the end of April, and allow 1-2 weeks for a response.  (If you fill out the form at a later date, the response may be slower.)  If you’d like more information, you may contact us at asexualcensus@gmail.com.

The Aromantic Spectrum in the Ace Community Survey

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by René Mellema & Tristan Miller

Recently, there has been a lot of discussion about the interaction between the asexual and aromantic communities.  Following our review of extant aro community surveys, we contribute to the discussion by reviewing the information we have about aromantic and aromantic-spectrum respondents to the 2017 Ace Community Survey.

Main Findings

Although our survey recruits from asexual communities rather than aromantic communities, we are able to gather information about people on the aromantic spectrum, including some allosexual people. Some of our important findings are as follows:

  1. Compared to aro community surveys, our survey finds a larger number of gray-(a)romantic, demiromantic, lithromantic, and quoiromantic people as compared to aromantic people.
  2. Among our respondents, people on the aromantic spectrum were more likely to be non-binary.  Allosexual people (regardless of romantic orientation) were more likely to be men.
  3. People on the aromantic spectrum, especially those who were also on the asexual spectrum, were less likely to have had romantic relationships.  Allosexual people on the aromantic spectrum were more likely to have non-romantic significant relationships, and to be polyamorous.
  4. Both the asexual or aromantic spectrums are negatively correlated with sexual activity.
  5. On average, allosexual people have a higher sex drive, and higher frequency of sexual fantasies, masturbation, and porn consumption, regardless of romantic orientation.

Further details are below. Continue reading →

The 2019 Ace Community Survey is now open!

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The 2019 survey is now closed! Thanks to all who participated!

It’s that time of year again – we are now recruiting participants for the Ace Community Survey!

The Ace Community Survey, run by the Ace Community Survey Team, collects valuable information on the demographics and experiences of members in the ace community, including asexual, demisexual, gray-asexual, and related identities. It is the largest survey of ace communities and creates a valuable pool of data for future ace community activists and researchers.

This year, we are working in conjunction with Dr. Lauren Beach from the Institute for Gender and Sexual Minority Health and Wellbeing at Northwestern University. Our collaboration will help further research into health disparities of sexual minority groups.

The survey is open to anyone: ace, non-ace, or still questioning.  As long as you are 13 years of age or older we want to hear from you! We want to get a wide variety of responses from as many parts of the community as possible, so we encourage you to share this link with any other potentially interested individuals you know or any ace communities you participate in.

Click here to take the 2019 Ace Community Survey: 

https://forms.gle/PZqPREQDE6MCibSV8

You will be able to view any published results from the survey at asexualcensus.wordpress.com. If you would like to receive an automatic email update when new results or announcements are posted, you can subscribe here.

For answers to common questions about the survey, please see the FAQ here.

Extant Aro Surveys

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“Aromantic” is an identity that is often defined as lacking romantic attraction.  There is also an aromantic spectrum (often shortened to “arospec”, “aro”, or occasionally, “aromantic”), which includes many aromantic-related identities such as greyromantic, quoiromantic, and lithromantic.  While aro people have long existed in ace communities, in recent years there has been growing interest in the aromantic spectrum as an independent entity. In particular, there are communities that are centered around aro identities, and which strive to include aromantic people who are not on the asexual spectrum.

The Ace Community Survey Team is interested in serving aro communities, especially where our existing infrastructure makes us uniquely capable of doing so. However, we must first recognize the survey work that aro communities have already done. Our goal is to: a) highlight notable aro community surveys that have published results, b) state some of the basic results, and c) identify topics that interest the creators of these surveys.

Continue reading →

2018 Raw Data Now Available to Researchers

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We are pleased to announce that raw data from the 2018 ace community census is now available for researchers wishing to perform additional analysis!

If you are a researcher and would like to request a copy of the raw data, please fill out the new data request form here. Raw data from 2014-2017 is also available.

If you have any questions, please contact us at asexualcensus@gmail.com.

Guide to the Asexual Community Survey Data

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When we grant researchers access to the Asexual Community Survey data, we also provide them with a guide that explains the survey methodology, data processing, as well as notable issues they should be aware of.  This guide has been updated, and is now available to the public.

Guide to the Asexual Community Survey Data

Researchers who are interested in survey data access should fill out this form.

How the CDC defines and classifies sexual violence

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Content note: explicit descriptions of sexual violence, including rape.

The Asexual Community Survey has asked questions related to sexual violence since 2015. In the 2018 survey, we expanded these questions in order to more closely match those in the 2010 Summary Report on the National Intimate Partner and Sexual Violence Survey (NISVS) produced by the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). Although the CDC’s definitions of sexual violence are publicly available in the NISVS report, few lay people would sift through over a hundred pages in order to find them. The lack of easily accessible information concerns us, because it deprives some victims of tools they need to understand their own experiences. The goal of this article is to explain the CDC categories and their use in the 2018 Asexual Community Survey.

Disclaimer: Some readers may be surprised by how their personal experiences are classified by the CDC. We will not tell anyone that they are wrong to classify their personal experiences in any particular way, and readers are free to view the CDC’s definitions as imperfect, incomplete, or incorrect. Even if readers agree with the definitions, they may find some other description of their personal experiences to be more salient.

Continue reading →