Impact on Psychological Well-being of Involvement in Kink Behaviors
Conditions
Keywords
kink, BDSM, flourishing, trauma recovery
Brief summary
The study examines the experiences of people who have engaged in alternative sexual behaviors, like kink or BDSM, and whether there have been any positive effects on well-being
Detailed description
The study design is an observational, cross-sectional mixed methods study with data collected anonymously online via a computer-assisted survey through Qualtrics. Subjects will be recruited through nonprobability snowball sampling
Interventions
None listed
Sponsors
The Alternative Sexualities Health Research Alliance
Study design
Observational model
ECOLOGIC_OR_COMMUNITY
Time perspective
RETROSPECTIVE
Eligibility
Sex/Gender
ALL
Age
18 Years to No maximum
Healthy volunteers
No
Inclusion criteria
\- 1. Age of majority in the legal jurisdiction (geographic location) where the survey is taken (usually age 18) 2. Self-reported involvement in kink behaviors 3. self-reported English-language proficiency sufficient to understand the study instrument. 4\. Answer correctly a series of questions to screen for bots and fraudulent responses
Exclusion criteria
* 1\. Report no involvement in kink activities or behaviors 2. Answer incorrectly three or more questions for bot detection and fraudulent responses, 3+ out of 4 bot detection questions. 3\. Clearly fraudulent use of the internet survey, such as: evidence of non-human data entry via an internet bot, duplicative or prank data entry that entails contradictory or clearly fraudulent data. 4\. Any condition that, in the professional judgment of the Principal Investigator, should exclude an individual from participation in the study.
Design outcomes
Primary
| Measure | Time frame | Description |
|---|---|---|
| Reports of Healing through Kink | Baseline | Primary Outcome measure: the proportion of people who affirmatively answer Have you ever experienced healing from trauma through kink? |
Secondary
| Measure | Time frame | Description |
|---|---|---|
| Types of Trauma Involved | Baseline | Secondary Objective 2: scores on the Life Events Checklist-5, comparing people who have experienced healing through kink to people who have not experienced healing through kink |
| Attachment Differences | Baseline | Secondary Objective 3: scores on the Adult Attachment Scale, comparing people who have experienced healing through kink to people who have not experienced healing through kink |
| Healing and Flourishing | Baseline | Secondary Objective 4: scores on the Diener Flourishing Scale, comparing people who have experienced healing through kink to people who have not experienced healing through kink |
| Subgroups More Likely | Baseline | Secondary Objective 1: demographic characteristics including gender identity, sexual orientation, yearly household income, yearly individual income, age, racial and ethnic identity, age of involvement in kink behavior and first awareness of kink fantasy/desire; aspects of kink identity |
| AEDP Features of Healing through Kink | Baseline | Secondary Objective 6: study will create a measure of features of experience that align with Accelerated Experiential Dynamic Psychotherapy, including keyword analysis of write-in answers for healing experiences; coding variables into a fidelity index of the clinical features of AEDP to reduce measurement error in the constituent AEDP feature variables; correlational and predictive analyses between and among AEDP clinical features/strategies, kink activities, and healing/flourishing scale scores |
| Level of current symptoms of Trauma | Baseline | Secondary Objective 7: scores on the PTSD Checklist-5, comparing people who have experienced healing through kink to people who have not experienced healing through kink |
| Flourishing | Baseline | Secondary Objective 8: scores on the Flourishing Index, comparing people who have experienced healing through kink to people who have not experienced healing through kink |
| Conditions for Healing through Kink | Baseline | Secondary Objective 5: responses to questions about kink activities; descriptions of negotiation, aftercare, and debriefing in relation to kink scenes; engagement in professional therapy, comparing people who have experienced healing through kink to people who have not experienced healing through kink |
Countries
United States
Outcome results
None listed