Dear TER hobbyist,

For the first time in the history of social science, a quantitative survey of TER hobbyists, conducted specifically by the Love Goddess is now underway. It is an original survey, the first of its kind in the world, ever undertaken with a such a specific group - and I am asking you to please participate!

The survey is anonymous and no IP addresses or any other identifying data is visible to me. I WANT it that way - the more anonymous, the better it is. And, the more hobbyists that participate, the more statistical power the survey will have.

Unfortunately I cannot put the link to the questionnaire directly in the posting, as this would potentially distribute the survey among individuals who are not TER hobbyists. Therefore, I will need you to PM me for the link (please click on the envelope next to my username). You only need to put the word "LINK" in the subject line, and I will PM you back with it. Obviously, this survey is only open to hobbyists who are VIP members - providers will not be able to participate.

Please help in this monumental endeavor - not only for the sake of my PhD which is long overdue and which rests on this work, but also to help social scientists understand that hobbyists are nice and good people, and not the disturbed or violent individuals that some have made them out to be. I will share the results with you as soon as I am able.

Thank you so much for your help and please PM me for the link!

With gratitude,
The Love Goddess

results.

Of course the definition of "nice and good" now comes into question.

tc

-- Modified on 9/14/2009 4:55:17 AM

I'd like some idea, please

I took the survey this morning. (Probably 15 minutes)
Very interesting. I can't wait to find out about the results of the survey.
Keep up the good work LG.
I know you'll be up for a Nobel prize for your hard work and research in the Hobby world.

I think the results will be very interesting indeed.

Swim

...with that premise (as a poster on another board pointed out) the survey will be worthless.  TER hobbyists don't comprise a majority of 'tricks' and 'Johns'.

I was only kidding about 'mdkiller2003' above but there is still a grain of truth there.  You won't be getting many responses from Jack the Ripper types.

I took the survey and answered seriously and as honestly as I could. With surveys there is never quite the exact option you're looking for on some questions. It's funny, I really felt dirty (non-good dirty, not fun dirty)about The Business.

Can't help it, but I just love takin' these sort of surveys. I cannot wait to read the results.

we were just a lab experiment.  You know, Petri dishes with keyboards.  LOL.

I've been seduced and abandoned by a woman getting her Ph.D. before, so I have abandonment issues.  

Usually I'd PM this sort of thing, but I know you don't do email or personal mail so I'll just post it here.  Feel free to delete it after reading since it's not intended for the board- besides, nobody reads posts once they're this far down the board.

I know how much work it is to do a research questionnaire (because I've done them in business), so please take this as a constructive comment.

After taking the survey, I had a comment that applies to at least 5 or 6 of the questions.  The range of answers wasn't broad enough to reflect my true response.  In several cases I was forced, even with the minimum number allowed on the multiple choice, to overstate something by a considerable amount.  In several of these questions, it showed a fairly strong bias pulling in a particular direction.  I think there were a couple questions that pulled me in the other direction too (I know I'm being non-specific to the point of being confusing).

Now, I know it's hard to design that out of a survey, but I thought in the future, you might want to show it to some of your non-peer colleagues in order to see if your questionnaire is constructed in a manner that will provide enough range of responses to accurately reflect a typical male- not what a female thinks a male would say (please don't take that the wrong way, but I don't know how else to state it).

I won't use an actual example, but in a few cases I thought it was like asking someone "How many times per week do you get drunk?"  10, 8 , 6 or 4?  Well, the answer for most people would be zero or maybe one, but those weren't even options in the multiple choice.  

In another example, you asked how often do you think about a particular thing and your choices were off by an order of magnitude based on my experience being a male and discussing this subject with 100's of other males.  As a result, several responses are significantly skewed in a particular direction that overstate or understate my actual thoughts on a particular issue.

Anyway, I know there are always limitations to any survey, but I just thought I'd mention that for future use.  All in all I enjoyed taking it and will be interested in the results.

Thank you for your comments, G2,

The survey instrument was actually designed and used with over 1,500 men who attended john schools in lieu of convictions. Other parts of the questionnaire has been used with a representative sample in the "Sex In America" survey by Gagnon et al - particularly the attitudinal items. These has been vetted and validated many times over. In order to compare one population with another, this was used. Yes, you are right - in quantitative surveys, sometimes it's definitely a "best reasonable fit" rather than a "true response."

I find the statement about the "female" rather humorous, since the main researchers in this case were all men. But I can tell you this - none of them are particularly pro-prostitution. Of course, that's to be expected with a bunch of sociologists and public health scientists who study deviance, LOL

I had nothing to do with it, haha,
The Love Goddess

are at the other end of the attitudinal continuum versus we TER types (the term "girlie men" comes to mind).  Sorry, I couldn't resist.  LOL.

Actually, knowing that makes me feel much better about you and I apologize for questioning your commercial sex worker/hobbyist street cred just because of your two X-chromosomes.

Of course, I understand the need for standardization given the origins of the questions.  That will actually make the results much more interesting since it will give it broader context.  Now you've piqued my curiosity even more!

as soon as I read the question--but the answer I wanted to check wasn't in the list of possible answers.

There were a few other questions where I could pick a "best answer" from the list, but like G2 I felt I was being guided to the answer the survey writers wanted.

I remember reading that a few years ago (probably when the medical marijuana initiative was on the California ballot) that a group hired a poll taker wearing a police uniform to go to a conservative middle-class shopping center and ask people their opinion about legalizing harmful drugs. Their poll results showed that people were overwhelmingly against it.

Admitedly the preceding example is pretty exteme. This survey may have been well designed to gather information from johns arrested for soliciting street prostitutes. I am not convinced it is well designed to highlight differences between that population and TER members.