Another female researcher, Katharine Davis (1861-1935), began her sexuality research along a slightly different path. In 1920, Davis was appointed superintendent of a prison, and she became interested in prostitution and sexually transmitted infections. Her survey and analysis were the largest and most comprehensive to date (Ericksen, 1999).
Davis believed that lesbianism was not pathological, and she defended homosexuality as no different from heterosexuality. This idea was considered a threat in the early 1900s because it could mean that women did not need men (Faderman, 1981). Her ideas about lesbianism were largely ignored, but the idea that women might have sexual appetites
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equal to men’s worried many male researchers. Soon the researchers of the day began to turn their attention toward strengthening the family unit. Researchers began to include married couples and turn away from studying single men and women (Ericksen, 1999).
Alfred Kinsey: Large-Scale Sexuality Research Begins in the United States
Alfred Kinsey (1894-1956) was probably the most influential sex researcher of the 20th century. His work was a decisive factor in changing many of the existing attitudes about sexuality. By training, Kinsey was a biologist with a PhD from Harvard who was an internationally known expert on gall wasps. In 1938, when Kinsey was a professor of zoology at Indiana University, he was asked to coordinate a new course on marriage and the family. Before courses like this appeared on college campuses, human sexuality had been discussed only in hygiene courses, in which the focus was primarily on the dangers of STIs and masturbation (V. L. Bullough, 1998).
Soon after the course began, students came to Kinsey with sexuality questions that he could not answer, and the existing literature was little help. This encouraged him to begin collecting data on his students’ sex lives. His study grew and before long included students who were not in his classes, faculty members, friends, and nonfaculty employees. Soon he was able to obtain grant money that enabled him to hire research assistants. By this time, Kinsey’s research had become well established in the scientific community. Kinsey had received a grant in 1941 from the Committee for Research in the Problems in Sex (CRPS), which was so impressed by his work that it awarded Kinsey half of its total research budget in the 1946-1947 academic year (V. L. Bullough, 1998).
In his early work, Kinsey claimed to be atheoretical. He felt that because sexuality research was so new, it was impossible to construct theories and hypotheses without first having a large body of information to base them on.
Kinsey’s procedure involved collecting information on each participant’s sexual life history, with an emphasis on specific sexual behaviors. Kinsey chose to interview participants, rather than have them fill out questionnaires, because he believed that questionnaires would not provide accurate responses. He was also unsure about whether participants would lie during an interview and because of this he built into the interview many checks to detect false information. Data collected from husbands and wives were compared for consistency, and the interview was done again 2 and 4 years later to see whether the basic answers remained the same.
Kinsey was also very worried about interviewer bias (which we will discuss later in this chapter). To counter interview bias, only Kinsey and three colleagues conducted the interviews. Of the total 18,000 interviews, Kinsey himself conducted 8,000 (Pomeroy, 1972). Participants were asked a minimum of 350 questions, and each interviewer memorized each question so he or she could more easily build rapport with each participant and wouldn’t have to continually consult a paper questionnaire. Interviewers used appropriate terminology that participants would understand during the interview. Interviews lasted several hours, and participants were assured that the information they provided would remain confidential. A total of 13 areas were covered in the interview, including demographics, physical data, early sexual knowledge, adolescent sexual behaviors, masturbation, orgasms in sleep, heterosexual petting, sexual intercourse, reproductive information, homosexual activity, sexual contact with animals, and sexual responsiveness. See Table 2.1 for information on some of Kinsey’s early findings.
The sampling procedures Kinsey used were also strengths of his research. He believed that he would have a high refusal rate if he used probability sampling. Because of this, he used what he called “quota sampling accompanied by opportunistic collection” (Gebhard & Johnson, 1979, p. 26). In other words, if he saw that a particular group— such as young married women—was not well represented in his sample, he would find organizations with a high percentage of these participants and add them.
Overall, he got participants from colleges and universities; hospitals; prisons; mental hospitals; institutions for young delinquents; churches and synagogues; groups of people with sexual problems; settlement houses; homosexual groups in Chicago, Los Angeles, New York, Philadelphia, and San Francisco; and members of various groups including the YMCA and the YWCA. Within these groups, every member was strongly
encouraged to participate in the project to minimize volunteer bias. Kinsey referred to this procedure as 100% sampling.
Institute for Sex Research In 1947, Kinsey and his associates established the Institute for Sex Research primarily to maintain the confidential data that had been collected and also to claim royalties from any published work (Gebhard & Johnson, 1979). Not coincidentally, two of Kinsey’s most popular and lucrative works were published soon afterward—in 1948, Sexual Behavior in the Human Male appeared, and in 1953, Sexual Behavior in the Human Female. These books were overnight best-sellers and provided the Institute with the financial ability to continue its work. Both books helped to break down the myths and confusion surrounding sexuality, while providing scientifically derived information about the sexual lives of men and women.
Many practices that had previously been seen as perverse or unacceptable in society (such as homosexuality, masturbation, and oral sex) were found to be widely practiced; as you might guess, such findings were very controversial and created strong reactions from conservative groups and religious organizations. Eventually, continued controversy about Kinsey’s work resulted in the termination of several research grants. The lack of funds was very frustrating for Kinsey, who did not like to ask people for money because he felt that to do so would be self-serving (Pomeroy, 1982).
Kinsey’s research challenged many of the assumptions about sexuality in the United States, and he stirred up antagonisms; in this sense, Kinsey was truly a pioneer in the field of sexuality research (V. L. Bullough, 1998). Just prior to his death in 1956, Kinsey feared his life’s work on sexuality had been a failure. The accompanying Personal Voices feature presents some comments made in his obituary from the New York Times.
Morton Hunt: Playboy Updates Dr. Kinsey
In the early 1970s, the Playboy Foundation commissioned a study to update Kinsey’s earlier work on sexual behavior. Morton Hunt eventually published these findings in his book Sexual Behavior in the 1970s (Hunt, 1974). In addition, he reviewed his findings in a series of articles in Playboy magazine.
Hunt gathered his sample through random selection from telephone books in 24 U. S. cities. Although Hunt’s sampling technique was thought to be an improvement over Kinsey’s techniques, there were also drawbacks. People without listed phone numbers, such as college students or institutionalized persons, were left out of the study. Each person in Hunt’s sample was called and asked to participate in a group discussion about sexuality. Approximately 20% agreed to participate.
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People participated in small group discussions about sexuality in America and, after doing so, were asked to complete questionnaires about their own sexual behavior and at-
