The outbreak of the devastating AIDS epidemic in the 1980s occurred at a time when the U. S. public health community was ill informed about the contemporary sexual practices of the citizenry.
To fill this informational void with data that could be used to predict and prevent the spread of AIDS, in 1987 an agency within the U. S. Department of Health and Human Services called for proposals to study the sexual attitudes and practices of American adults.
A team of distinguished researchers at the University of Chicago answered this call with a plan for a national survey to assess the prevalence of a broad array of sexual practices and attitudes and to place them in their social contexts within the U. S. population. The research team—Edward Laumann and his colleagues John Gagnon,
Robert Michael, and Stuart Michaels—were initially heartened by the acceptance of their proposal in 1988 and by the provision of government funds adequate to support a survey of 20,000 people.
A sample size this large would have allowed the investigators to draw reliable conclusions about various subpopulations in America, such as diverse ethnic minorities and homosexuals. However, after more than two years of extensive planning, the research team’s efforts were dealt a crushing blow when federal funding for their study was withdrawn. In 1991, conservative members of Congress, offended by the prospect of government funding of sex research, introduced legislation that effectively eliminated federal funding for such studies. Unfortunately, legitimate sexuality research remains under fire, largely from conservative organizations and politicians who continue to feel threatened by this type of research (see the Sex and Politics box, "Sex Research Under Siege").
Undaunted by this setback, Laumann and his colleagues secured funding from several private foundations that enabled them to proceed with their project, albeit with a much smaller sample. The research team, working with the National Opinion Research Center at the University of Chicago, used sophisticated sampling techniques to select a representative sample of 4,369 Americans ages 18 to 59. An amazing 79% of the sample subjects agreed to participate, yielding a final study group of 3,432 respondents. This high response rate dramatically demonstrates that a broad array of people will participate in a highly personal sex survey when they are assured that the societal benefits of the research are important and that the confidentiality of their responses is guaranteed. Furthermore, this unusually high participation rate, together with the fact that the study population closely approximated many known demographic characteristics of the general U. S. population, yielded data that most social scientists believe reliably indicate the sexual practices of most American adults ages 18 to 59.
Forced to limit their sample size, Laumann and his associates had to forgo sampling a broad range of subpopulations and instead oversampled African Americans and Hispanic Americans to secure valid information about these two largest ethnic minorities in America. Thus, although the study population was representative of White Americans, African Americans, and Hispanic Americans, too few members of other racial and ethnic minorities (such as Jews, Asian Americans, and Native Americans) were included to provide useful information about these groups.
Laumann and his colleagues trained 220 professionals with prior interviewing experience to interview all 3,432 respondents face-to-face. They designed the questionnaire to be easily understood and to flow naturally across various topics. Using trained,
Sex Research: Methods and problems
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experienced interviewers ensured that respondents understood all the questions posed. In addition, to validate the overall responses, the questionnaire contained internal checks to measure the consistency of answers.
This study, titled the National Health and Social Life Survey (NHSLS), provided the most comprehensive information about adult sexual behavior in America since Kinsey’s research. In fact, because Laumann and his associates used far better sampling techniques than did the Kinsey group, the NHSLS study is a representative U. S. sex survey that reliably reflects the sexual practices of the general U. S. adult population in the 1990s. An analysis of the NHSLS findings was published in two books. The first book is a detailed and scholarly text titled The Social Organization of Sexuality: Sexual Practices in the United States (Laumann et al., 1994). Michael, Gagnon, Laumann, and Gina Kolata—a respected New York Times science author—wrote a less technical companion volume for the public titled Sex in America: A Definitive Study. This book, also published in 1994, emerged as a popular trade book.
The NHSLS findings contradicted conventional wisdom—promulgated by magazine surveys and mass media images—that envisioned a "sex crazy" American populace madly pursuing excessive indulgence in all kinds of conventional and unconventional sexual
CHAPTER 2
practices. In reality, the results of the NHSLS reflect an American people who are more content with their erotic lives, less sexually active, and more sexually conservative than was widely believed. These findings are especially ironic in view of the judgmental opposition to the Lau- mann study by conservative legislators who feared it would provide a mandate for excessive sexual expression.
As previously mentioned, our understanding of the impact of ethnic diversity on sexual behavior has been improving as a result of several research studies. The NHSLS is a good example of this expanding knowledge base.