A Descriptive Exploration of Flourishing Through Kink

The Alternative Sexualities Health Research Alliance1,131 enrolled

Overview

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

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

Study Type

OBSERVATIONAL

Enrollment

1,131

Conditions

Impact on Psychological Well-being of Involvement in Kink Behaviors

Eligibility

Sex: ALLMin age: 18 Years

Medical Language ↔ Plain English

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.

Locations (1)

TASHRA

San Francisco, California, United States

Outcomes

Primary Outcomes

Reports of Healing through Kink

Primary Outcome measure: the proportion of people who affirmatively answer "Have you ever experienced healing from trauma through kink?"

Time frame: Baseline

Secondary Outcomes

Subgroups More Likely

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

Time frame: Baseline

Types of Trauma Involved

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

Time frame: Baseline

Attachment Differences

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

Time frame: Baseline

Healing and Flourishing

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

Time frame: Baseline

Conditions for Healing through Kink

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

Data from ClinicalTrials.gov

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