Sexing up stats: A visualisation of The Great British Sex Survey

19 July 2011

To accompany The Sex Education Show (Tue 19 July, 8pm, C4) Multiplatform Commissioning Editor Adam Gee has commissioned a unique online application to represent the eye-popping results of a specially commissioned sex survey.

Over 7,500 Brits took part in answering intimate and revealing questions about all aspects of their sex life - with at times surprising, shocking and funny results.

Conducted by Ipsos MediaCT, the survey exposes the sexual landscape of Britain today. The results are divided up into regions, age group, sexual preferences - and even by supermarket and mobile phone of choice.

See the results here: http://www.channel4.com/info/press/news/how-often-do-we-do-it-what-do-we-do-and-where-do-we-do-it

Viewers/users can discover such fascinating titbits themselves by using ‘The Sexperience 1000' visualiser.

Gee commissioned Mint Digital and Lingobee to create this innovative online visualisation of the data from the survey. It uses a condensed version of the survey results focusing on 1,000 demographically representative UK individuals. It can be viewed online on www.channel4.com/sexperience under ‘The Sexperience 1000' - which provides an interactive journey through the sexual experiences of these 1000 individuals.

The 1000 responses to 20 questions from the survey are visually represented by the individual people forming themselves into bars in a chart or graphical clusters; but users are also able to drill right down to each individual, and can choose to follow specific respondents across their answers and preferences.

Visitors to the site can share the questions they are viewing through social media sites, including via specially generated tongue-in-cheek contextual tweets for each survey question.

Adam Gee said, "Sexperience 1000 is a playful and engaging way for people to absorb information about the nation's sexual preferences, and find out whether their own personal experiences tally with the results. In short, what is normal - a big concern for teens in particular. This innovative visualisation represents the data in such a way that while users can see the bigger picture, the individual still counts."

The application design has a particular theme drawing on early computer games 8 bit display technology. This is because every single one of the 1000 respondents is individually represented which means they have to be portrayed in just a few expressive pixels.