P2010 Survey 1 Results

So I know this write-up is super late.  My apologies on that front.

I was originally planning to make this a very formal summary including my own interpretations and all that jazz… but why don’t we cut the bullshit and cut straight to the chase?

INTRODUCTION /DEMOGRAPHIC

Over the course of 3 weeks (7 November 2010 - 28 November 2010), I ran a research experiment on Beefyfrat to observe specific social trends amongst gainers and encouragers.

42 individuals participated in the experiment, ranging in age from 16 to 52 with a mean age of 27.4.

All participants were male, 38 identifying themselves as homosexual, 4 identifying themselves as bisexual.

40 participants identified as Caucasian, 1 identified as Latino, and 1 identified as Italian.

27 participants were single, 14 participants were in relationships (whether open or monogamous), and 1 did not respond to this question.

Level of education was just about normally distributed: 2 had not completed high school, 5 had graduated high school, 13 were not yet finished with an undergraduate degree or did not finish their undergraduate education, 1 held an Associate's degree, 14 held a Bachelor's degree, 5 held a Master's degree, and 2 held a Doctorate degree.

Individuals responded from 17 states across the USA, and 5 countries overall.

DESIGN

All participants received a 30-item survey.  Each item described a social aspect or situation.  Each question was scored on a 5-level Likert item (1 = strongly disagree, 5 = strongly agree).  Participants also had to complete a free-response section, describing why they believed they were interested in gaining and encouraging and what inspired them to gain and/or encourage.

RESULTS

8 people agreed and 21 people strongly agreed (over 69% of respondents total) that a belly is more sexually arousing than a penis.  Certainly begs the question: is a belly rub just a belly rub?

14 people agreed and 11 people strongly agreed (over 59% of respondents total) that it was okay to give someone a belly rub, even if they already had a boyfriend.

7 people agreed and 20 people strongly agreed (over 64% of respondents total) that encouraging a gainer is okay, even if they already had a boyfriend.

23 people agreed and 6 people strongly agreed (over 69% of respondents total) that they considered their friends physically attractive.  This shows that there may be some weight to the social psychological principle of choosing friends based on their attractiveness.

15 people agreed and 5 people strongly agreed (over 47% of respondents total) that they would be more likely to befriend someone if they were physically attractive.  See above.

As for the free response section, little could be quantified given the very subjective nature of the question and answer.  However, most responses pointed to their original interest “always being there” or developing around puberty.  Commonalities between responses included feeling “different” from the other kids, being incredibly relieved upon meeting another gainer in real life, and going from a skinny kid in school to a fat adult.  Most of the inspiration surrounding their wanting to gain and/or encourage stemmed from the presence of gainer media, such as online forums, social networking sites, or even simply photos or artwork depicting sexualized fat men/gainer situations.

Full data table can be found at the end of the post.

DISCUSSION

I’m going to keep my interpretations of these findings primarily to myself mainly because the data could be interpreted in many different ways and it’s impossible to know everyone’s specific life situation.  I found things that I did expect: individuals were more at ease hanging out with “civilian” friends than they were gainers, individuals had a more relaxed attitude towards one’s weight, etc.  With regards to the items that surprised me (or most of what I reported above), I can only really offer one (unfortunate) sweeping generalization: we are all men.  I’m hesitant to use this because it’s kind of a cop-out… but it seems that there can definitely be communication issues when it comes to gainers – a problem that is universal to everyone, male or female, gainer or otherwise.  My advice?  Be very clear with your friends and your partners as to what constitutes sex, what is deemed acceptable behavior, and where your boundaries lie.

Table 1