I’m passing this along for three reasons, because Heather’s a friend, because she’s doing good work, and because I hope I can help her find adults in their late 20s, 30s, 40s and beyond who are willing to complete a confidential survey for what I consider to be a worthwhile project.

Heather Corinna is doing a large study on multigenerational experiences with and attitudes about casual sex. The data will ideally be used for publication, but answers are completely anonymous and will only be used anonymously.

There’s a lot of buzz 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 most of the buzz out there, she’s not interested in telling anyone how to have sex, warning people off any given kind of sex or in presenting any one kind of sex as “the best way.” She’s just looking for what’s real, both in sexual attitudes and experiences among a diverse array of ages, genders and sexual identities, races and sexual ideologies/constructions. 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. The study will take around twenty minutes.

She would like the study to show as diverse an array of people as possible, especially since so often media representations or cultural conversations about casual sex are usually only about heterosexual white women or about gay men. She particularly wants to be sure LGBT people, people of color, those over 45 and social conservatives are adequately represented, so please share this link with your networks after you take the survey yourself, especially if your networks include people in any or all of those groups.

http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/S97WR6H

If you don’t know who Heather is, she’s been working in human sexuality for around 12 years. She is the founder and executive director for Scarleteen.com, does sex education outreach at youth shelters and women’s clinics in Seattle, and has been a sex columnist and writer online for sites like The Guardian and RH Reality Check. She has also been published in a handful of anthologies and is 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). If you have any questions, you can contact Heather at hcorinna@mac.com

Considering that so flipping much of what we “know” about human sexuality is based on research conducted on undergraduates I’m always enthusiastic about efforts to include the other 85% of the adult population in the research! Thanks to Heather for doing the research and thanks to you if you choose to participate.