Boylove Survey and Research Institute

The Boylove Survey and Research Institute (BLSRI for short) was a project designed to obtain reasonable data about the online boylove community through online surveys.

Goals

The mission statement of BLSRI is rather straightforward and reads as follows:

Our mission is to provide a fun and interactive way for the online boylove community to know more about itself through survey questions.

The desired goal was to post one weekly survey question with a yes or no answer to entice boylovers to check the site regularly. These questions were often flimsy and their results unreliable as they were more often designed for fun than for serious data collection purposes.

The other goal was to have one serious survey question every month or so consisting of ten questions. These were supposed to be carefully written and have multiple answers a user could select from.

History

In early 2004, Fame and Dragonist noted that many BoyChat survey questions appeared again and again. For example, "what is your AOA?" was a regular survey question. They began the Boylove Survey and Research Institute in response to these recurring surveys. Their goal was a permanent databank of common survey questions and a fun site for the boylover community.

On 18 January 2004, Dragonist and Fame announced the project on several boylover message boards under the nickname "The Survey Team". Unfortunately, programming issues delayed the actual launch of the web site until skilled coder Atom could step in and help the survey team writing website code.

On 31 March 2004 the first survey was initiated. It was titled Boy Favorites and dealt with characteristics of boys. The survey was advertised on several message boards, but reception was mixed. Some BoyChat posters accused the survey team of conspiring to gather personal information, including IP addresses, about boylovers. The administrators claimed that the access logs were encrypted and therefore hidden from them, and that the logs only were being used to stop multiple responses. Despite that many chose to forgo participation for security concerns, the first survey garnered 414 responses.

Shortly after getting off the ground, the BLSRI team was joined by a BoyChat poster known as Zackboy. He volunteered to help the team both with the website and surveys, and the three laid many plans for improvements to the site.

Throughout mid-2004, the team created three other major surveys:

• Adult Friends and Young Friends
• Personal BL History
• Boylovers and Sexuality

In spite of the project's initial popularity, subsequent surveys drew far fewer respondents. The team hoped that the more in-depth survey that followed Boy Favorites would garner more responses, but it only managed 180. Perhaps the boylover community had become disinterested, or security concerns turned people off. Maybe the questions were simply too complicated.

In any case, the third and fourth surveys only received a tiny number of responses from the forums the team had been soliciting. In an attempt to get more respondents, the administrators decided to keep the survey open longer and asked the community to help with the project. As a last resort, Fame posted on the now-defunct Boylovers United forum, asking the several-thousand-strong membership there to help with the surveys. This produced more responses but it was obvious that the initial success of BLSRI had waned. In the end, the third and fourth surveys closed with 138 and 86 submissions respectively.

In the summer of 2004, the administrators decided for personal reasons to take a break from working on the site and to re-think the project. Several months went by without new surveys. Finally, on 22 October 2004, the site was partially redesigned and the final results published. Links to new surveys and weekly questions were removed, effectively declaring the project as abandoned.

A notice posted on BLSRI still reads:

We have decided it's best to let BLSRI rest for a while, give the audience the result you must have been waiting for and gather new ideas and strength. We were planning to return in early 2005 with something new and exciting - but alas all seem to have lost their interest.

Organizational structure

The two founders and administrators shared power equally between themselves. Dragonist became Technical Administrator, maintaining the web page and compiling results. Fame took on the role of Information Administrator, writing surveys and managing public relations. Zackboy assisted on the technical end.

Criticism of BLSRI

The main arguments both for and against BLSRI are expressed best in this as well as this BoyChat thread.

Critics point to that

• the data are statistically invalid, as they are representative only of volunteers who happen to post on a given message board

and claim that

• the name of the project is misleading and seems to refer to an academic institution
• the surveys attempt to gather IP addresses and personal information
• the surveys were pointless
• they were inaccurate due to statistical invalidity
• vigilantes and government officials would use the data to attack boylovers.

The disclaimer on the project site responds to some of this criticism, stating that the data is, indeed, inaccurate and that BSLRI surveys were not designed as scientifically accurate surveys in the first place.

Survey results

Accuracy of the results is limited by the self-selective nature of the responses and fraudulent submissions. While it is unknown how much the survey was skewed by these and other variables, the results may still give an approximation of the characteristics of the online boylove community.

Survey highlights

The results given here represent only a highlight of each survey. Some questions had responses that were chosen by very few respondents, and so for these questions, only about 75 % or more of responses are included (depending on variance).

Boy Favorites

• 78.7% said that their ideal boy is aged ten to fourteen. Of those, 18.7% prefer ten, 16.5% prefer eleven, 28.5% prefer twelve, 21.7% prefer thirteen, 14.4% prefer fourteen.
• 53.6% prefer blue eyed boys, 14.3% prefer brown eyed boys, 15.7% prefer green eyed boys.
• 57.7% prefer blond haired boys, 19% prefer brown haired boys, 9.6% prefer black haired boys
• 61.4% prefer light skinned boys, 9.4% prefer dark skinned boys, 24.1% prefer a variation between dark and light.

Adult Friends and Young Friends

• 22.5% had an adult friend as a boy, 69.8% did not, and 7.1% are unsure as to whether they did or not.
• 67.8% have had at least one young friend, 27.2% did not, 5% are unsure as to whether they did or not.

Personal BL History

• 14.4% realized they were boylovers between the ages of 8 and 11, 39.6% between the ages of 12 and 15, 20.9% between the ages of 16 and 19, and 14.4% after age 20.
• 52.5% grew up in a suburban region,31.2% in an urban region, and 16.7% in a rural region.
• 35.5% have a younger brother, 37% an older brother, 33.3% a younger sister, 37% have an older sister.
• 73.2% grew up in a two parent household, 19.6% in a single mother household.
• 77.9% consider themselves middle class.
• 8.7% have some high school, 28.3% graduated high school, 24.6% have some university, 19.6% hold a bachelor's degree, 8.7% a master's.

Boylovers and Sexuality

• 52.9% first engaged in masturbation between ages 8 and 11, 29.9% between ages 12 and 15.
• As children 39.1% engaged in sex-play with other children several times, 26.4% never did, 16.1% did once, 16.1% often.
• 75.6% have a strong sexual attraction to boys, 19.8% have a slight attraction
• 64% have no attraction to young girls, 30.2% have a slight attraction, 5.8% have a strong attraction
• 28.4% have no attraction to men, 47.7% have a slight attraction, 14% have a strong attraction
• 53.5% have no attraction to women, 34.9% have a slight attraction, 11.6% have a strong attraction

External links

• Boylove Survey and Research Institute (includes archived survey results)