Sexuality studies routinely involve the use of college-age populations. Brecher and Brecher (1986) refer to these populations as samples of convenience, because the par­ticipants used are convenient for researchers who tend to work at universities. Kinsey used such samples in his initial research at Indiana University. The question is, can these studies be generalized to […]

Earlier in this chapter we touched on the topic of volunteer bias in our discussion of Morton Hunt’s Sexual Behavior in the 1970s. Because Hunt’s sample was such a small per­centage of those he contacted, volunteer bias prevents his results from being generaliz — able to the population as a whole. Imagine that we wanted […]

Many problems in sexuality research are more difficult to contend with than in other types of research. These include ethical issues, volunteer bias, sampling problems, and reliability. Ethical Issues Ethical issues affect all social science—and sexuality research in particular. Prior to a person’s participation in a study of sexuality, researchers must obtain the participant’s informed […]

  ould it be that the questions researchers ask about sexuality are more important than the answers? Some researchers believe so, and research indicates that our questions about sexuality may indeed shape our thoughts (Ericksen, 1999). The following is an ex­cerpt from Julia Ericksen’s Kiss and Tell, a book that explores human sexuality research. Sexual […]

Correlations are often used when it is not possible to do an experiment. For example, be­cause it is unethical to do a controlled experiment in a sexual abuse study, we would study a given population to see whether there is any correlation between past sexual abuse and later difficulties with intimate relationships. The limitation of […]

Experiments are the only research method that allows us to isolate cause and effect. This is because in an experiment, strict control is maintained over all variables so that one variable can be isolated and examined. For example, let’s say you want to teach high school students about AIDS, but you don’t know which teaching […]

Participant observation research involves researchers going into an environment and monitoring what is happening naturally. For instance, a researcher who wants to explore male and female flirting patterns and alcohol might watch interactions between men and women in bars. This would entail several visits and specific note taking on all that occurs. However, it is […]

the number of erections per sexual episode in a self-report, but he cannot exaggerate in a laboratory. Direct observation is much more expensive than any of the other methods and may not be as generalizable, because it would be impossible to gather a random sample. In ad­dition, direct observation focuses on behaviors and, as a […]

Questionnaire or survey research is generally used to identify the attitudes, knowledge, or behavior of large samples. For instance, Kinsey used this method to obtain informa­tion about his many participants, though questions have since been raised about Kinsey’s validity and reliability. Kinsey recognized these problems and tried to increase the va­lidity by using interviews to […]

When a researcher describes a case study, he or she attempts to explore individual cases to formulate general hypotheses. Freud was famous for his use of this methodology. He would study hysteria in only one patient, because he didn’t have several patients with similar complaints. Using this method, however, does not allow researchers to general­ize […]