Most people are curious about what everyone else is doing in bed. Well, not always in bed. Maybe it’s in the car, or a hotel. But whatever it is they’re doing, human curiosity has always wanted to peep into the sex lives of others.
It’s not the sort of information people – and Irish people in particular – tend to share. Yet everybody still wants to know whether they are normal, or just average. At what age do people start having sex, and at what age do they stop, if they ever do?
Are couples happier than single people, and how often do they have sex? Do gay and lesbian people have better sex than heterosexuals? Is the singles scene actually an orgy of rampant casual app-encounters, as we are led to believe?
The Irish Times's first sex survey is online now, and will close at midnight on June 15th. It's aimed at everyone: young and old, gay and straight, transgender, lesbian and virgin and covers the rainbow of relationships.
But why bother to do this voluntary anonymous survey online? Sexologist Emily Power Smith, of empowerme.com, says: “People are worried about their sex lives compared with what they think other people are doing, and they can feel inadequate based on absolutely no evidence.”
Psychotherapist and sex therapist Trish Murphy agrees: “People are hungry for knowledge; everybody wants to know what is the ‘average’. But there’s a lot of misinformation and mythology about sex, partly because people get a lot of their information online.”
Our readers are part of this project and by taking part in the survey you will be enhancing our society’s knowledge of this important subject.
One of the last comprehensive sex surveys was The Irish Study of Sexual Health and Relationships carried out for the Crisis Pregnancy Agency and the Department of Health and Children, published nearly a decade ago. It will be interesting to see what, if anything, has changed since then.
To carry out the survey, go to irishtimes.com. It will take you between two and 10 minutes to complete and you will need to go right from beginning to end for your results to be counted.
As you navigate through the questions, you will be led to areas that are relevant to you, depending on your gender, sexuality and relationship status. Virgins won’t be asked the same questions as people in relationships, for example. And we will also seek to find out what the term “virgin” means today.
Throughout the survey, we have used the word “sex” to mean what you think it means, since sex is far more varied than sexual intercourse.
For an an example of the sort of questions you will be asked, see panel.
We’re not asking these questions just for the fun of it, although the answers will be fascinating and informative, especially when our team of data analysts and psychologists interpret the results.
We know that our readers are interested in this topic and while this is something we’ve never done before, we’re hoping that our readers will engage with the project.
The results should inform opinion and belief about sexuality and perhaps even change our minds about what we think goes on behind closed doors. It will certainly help us to better understand the wide range of sexuality and sexual behaviour in Ireland, rather than just to speculate.
The first sex survey was conducted by the YMCA in 1902 in the US and it was about masturbation among young men: 113 years later we’re asking the same question of men – and women – along with up to 50 more questions, depending on your profile.
This is not a representative survey weighted for social status, age and gender, as a scientific poll would be. The advantage of a voluntary self-selecting poll, however, is that it is anonymous. It should also reach a far wider audience.
No survey – as the British election showed – is 100 per cent accurate, and we’re not claiming that ours will be.
“A strictly scientific approach might install CCTV in a randomly selected set of bedrooms.
"This would not only make staggeringly dull viewing for most of the time but would also miss those sudden bursts of passion in the shower or the shed," says David Spiegelhalter in his new book, What Statistics Can Tell Us About Sexual Behaviour.
Nonetheless, says sex therapist Margaret Dunne, “We Irish tend not to discuss our sex lives – even with people with whom we share everything else – as we view it as private and personal.
“While that may be fine, it does, however, leave us isolated and at a loss as to what is ‘normal’.”
Sample questions
Do you think it's possible to maintain a happy relationship without sex?
What is the most important factor for creating intimacy between partners?
Have you ever been unfaithful to your current partner?
How often, on average, have you had sex in the past year?
Are you satisfied with your sex life?
Does your sex drive match your partner's? To take part in the survey click here
