Multigenerational Experiences with & Attitudes About Casual Sex

 

Hello! My name is Heather Corinna, and I've been working in human sexuality for around 12 years. I am the founder and executive director for Scarleteen.com, I do sex education outreach at youth shelters and women's clinics in Seattle, and I have been a sex columnist and writer online for sites like The Guardian and RH Reality Check. I have also been published in a handful of anthologies and am the author of S.E.X.: The All-You-Need-to-Know-Progressive Sexuality Guide to Get You Through High School and College (DaCapo Press).

There's a lot of buzz right now about "hooking up," the newest term for casual sex, though casual sex isn't new at all -- nor does it only belong to the current generation, despite often being presented that way. Unlike a lot of the buzz out there, I'm not interested in telling anyone how to have sex or in presenting any one kind of sex as the one " best way." I'm just looking for what's real, both in sexual attitudes and personal experiences.

Rather, I'm doing this study to try and gather data on multigenerational experiences and attitudes with/about casual sex so as to discover and present a more diverse, realistic and non-prescriptive picture of people's sex lives and ideas about sex. The data will ideally be used for publication, but your answers are completely anonymous and will only be used anonymously.

The only requirements for participating in this study are being over the age of 16, and having had some kind of sexual partnership before, even if none has been casual.

If you are under 16 and/or have NEVER had sexual partners of any kind, please do not take this survey.

The study will take around 30 minutes, and I'd encourage you to be as honest as possible. Please also do not feel your answers need to be politically correct. Some questions may feel similar, but please answer all of them. (Some may also seem strange coming from me, but a lot of this has to do with evaluating cultural attitudes, so no question should be presumed to be based in my personal opinions or ideas.) I assure you there's a method to my madness.

There is also a short follow-up survey linked at the end of this survey, which includes issues which came up in the data that I overlooked or didn't see as topical/needed at the time. I very much appreciate your time and your help with my project!

From here on in, we use the term sexual partners. By sexual partners we mean people you have engaged in some kind of genital (penis, vulva and/or anus) sex with, which may or may not be genital intercourse. If and when we mean intercourse, we'll specify that.

If your gender identity or those of your partners have changed over time, for questions where that is relevant, simply refer to each person's gender as you understood it at the time.