A Sex Survey? Shocking! We know. But this is old news. Felix began with the annual Sex Survey in 2011 and since then a few surveys have been released, each in a different style and with different questions. Every year a few questions are added or removed, depending on what the current team was curious about. As the world progressed, so did the survey. This is best seen in the Gender category, where this year we had more than 30 non-binary people answer, broadening our data analysis to welcome more students. Most of our questions were also tailored to include more students from sexual minorities, such as asexual or questioning students.
Last year, we revived the Sex Survey from its COVID-induced slumber and we noticed a significant drop of roughly one thousand responses compared to the responses from the 2020 survey. We hypothesis that most students arrived at Imperial after the last survey was published and never got around to learning of it.
With a four-year gap, many missed out. The 1500 responses were wonderful, but many were incomplete. The survey was a hassle to analyse with most questions providing a text-box answer, a rather rookie mistake. I almost fainted in the Chemistry building categorising the Porn and Kinks questions. So this year, we changed things up again.
Every answer was mandatory but included a SKIP option, for those that did not want to answer. Deeper questions, such as “Where did you have sex on campus?” were linked behind yes/no questions such as “Have you had sex on campus?”, which blocked a student from answering a question they could not relate to. This year, we also decided to release the survey in the Autumn, compared to the usual Spring release. Hence we have about half the responses from last year.
Writing the Python code and generating graphs in Illustrator, Canva and Flourish has been a pleasure. It definitely was no easy accomplishment. The 2025 Sex Survey would not have been possible without the editors, digital designers and illustrators who helped compile the results.
We wish you a lot of fun indulging in the numbers and learn what the Imperial norm is and answer questions you may have never asked yourself.
I want the numbers!
