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OpenTrials
Completed

NCT Number: NCT06969183

A Descriptive Exploration of Flourishing Through Kink

The study examines the experiences of people who have engaged in alternative sexual behaviors, like kink or BDSM, and whether there have been any positive effects on well-being

Completed

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Key information

Conditions

Impact on Psychological Well-being of Involvement in Kink Behaviors

Age range

18 year and older

Sex eligibility

All sexes

Study type

Observational

Primary location

TASHRA

San Francisco, California, 94571, United States

About this study

The study design is an observational, cross-sectional mixed methods study with data collected anonymously online via a computer-assisted survey through Qualtrics. Subjects will be recruited through nonprobability snowball sampling

Who can participate

Healthy volunteers accepted: No

Only the study team can determine whether someone qualifies for participation.

Inclusion criteria

  • 1. Age of majority in the legal jurisdiction (geographic location) where the survey is taken (usually age 18) 2. Self-reported involvement in kink behaviors 3. self-reported English-language proficiency sufficient to understand the study instrument.
  • Answer correctly a series of questions to screen for bots and fraudulent responses

Exclusion criteria

  • 1. Report no involvement in kink activities or behaviors 2. Answer incorrectly three or more questions for bot detection and fraudulent responses, 3+ out of 4 bot detection questions.
  • Clearly fraudulent use of the internet survey, such as: evidence of non-human data entry via an internet "bot", duplicative or prank data entry that entails contradictory or clearly fraudulent data.
  • Any condition that, in the professional judgment of the Principal Investigator, should exclude an individual from participation in the study.

Treatment and study plan

Primary outcomes

  1. Reports of Healing through Kink

    Time frame: Baseline

    Primary Outcome measure: the proportion of people who affirmatively answer "Have you ever experienced healing from trauma through kink?"

Secondary outcomes

  1. Subgroups More Likely

    Time frame: Baseline

    Secondary Objective 1: demographic characteristics including gender identity, sexual orientation, yearly household income, yearly individual income, age, racial and ethnic identity, age of involvement in kink behavior and first awareness of kink fantasy/desire; aspects of kink identity

  2. Types of Trauma Involved

    Time frame: Baseline

    Secondary Objective 2: scores on the Life Events Checklist-5, comparing people who have experienced healing through kink to people who have not experienced healing through kink

  3. Attachment Differences

    Time frame: Baseline

    Secondary Objective 3: scores on the Adult Attachment Scale, comparing people who have experienced healing through kink to people who have not experienced healing through kink

  4. Healing and Flourishing

    Time frame: Baseline

    Secondary Objective 4: scores on the Diener Flourishing Scale, comparing people who have experienced healing through kink to people who have not experienced healing through kink

  5. Conditions for Healing through Kink

    Time frame: Baseline

    Secondary Objective 5: responses to questions about kink activities; descriptions of negotiation, aftercare, and debriefing in relation to kink scenes; engagement in professional therapy, comparing people who have experienced healing through kink to people who have not experienced healing through kink

  6. AEDP Features of Healing through Kink

    Time frame: Baseline

    Secondary Objective 6: study will create a measure of features of experience that align with Accelerated Experiential Dynamic Psychotherapy, including keyword analysis of write-in answers for healing experiences; coding variables into a fidelity index of the clinical features of AEDP to reduce measurement error in the constituent AEDP feature variables; correlational and predictive analyses between and among AEDP clinical features/strategies, kink activities, and healing/flourishing scale scores

  7. Level of current symptoms of Trauma

    Time frame: Baseline

    Secondary Objective 7: scores on the PTSD Checklist-5, comparing people who have experienced healing through kink to people who have not experienced healing through kink

  8. Flourishing

    Time frame: Baseline

    Secondary Objective 8: scores on the Flourishing Index, comparing people who have experienced healing through kink to people who have not experienced healing through kink

Sponsors and collaborators

Lead sponsor

The Alternative Sexualities Health Research Alliance

Other

Registry information

Important dates

Study start
2024
Primary completion
2024
Study completion
2024
First posted
May 13, 2025
Registry last updated
May 13, 2025

OpenTrials presents study information sourced from ClinicalTrials.gov. The official registry record should be consulted for the latest information.

View the official ClinicalTrials.gov record (opens in a new tab)

This listing is for discovery and informational purposes only. It is not medical advice, does not guarantee that a study is recruiting, and does not determine eligibility. Contact the study team and a qualified healthcare professional when considering participation.