Now that we have explored some of the findings of studies in sexuality, let us look at the specifics of how these studies are conducted. Each study that we have discussed in this chapter was scientific, yet researchers used different experimental methods depending on the kind of information they were trying to gather. For example, […]

A few sexuality studies have been done on specific populations, such as adolescents and older adults. We will now review some of the more prominent studies. Teens The National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health (Add Health, 2002) was initi­ated in 1994 to study the health and risk behaviors of children in grades 7 through 12. […]

In 1987, facing a devastating AIDS outbreak, the U. S. Department of Health and Human Services called for researchers to study the sexual attitudes and practices of American adults. A group of researchers from the University of Chicago—Edward Laumann, John Gagnon, Robert Michael, and Stuart Michaels—were selected to coor­dinate this national study of over 20,000, […]

A number of other studies have had an impact on how we think about sexuality today. The Janus Report and the National Health and Social Life Survey each tried to update Kinsey’s large-scale survey of sexual behavior. Let’s look at each in turn. The Janus Report In 1993 Drs. Samuel and Cynthia Janus published The […]

Alfred Kinsey’s death prevented him from publishing a book on homosexuality as he had hoped. He had collected a large number of case histories from homosexuals and had learned that a large number of people had participated in homosexual behavior in child­hood and adulthood. Homosexuality, to Kinsey, was not as “abnormal” as society had thought. […]

In the early 1950s, a researcher named Evelyn Hooker (1907-1996) undertook a study on male homosexuality. Hooker compared two groups of men, one gay and the other straight, who were matched for age, education, and IQ levels. She collected informa­tion about their life histories, personality profiles, and psychological evaluations and asked professionals to try to […]

The Death of Alfred Kinsey any people believe that Kinsey’s early death at the age of 62 was caused by the stress of the constant criticism and struggle he lived under as he tried to legitimize the field of sexuality research. In fact, Kinsey’s colleagues believed he literally worked himself to death trying to do […]

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, […]

By now you have probably realized that men were doing much of the early research into human sexuality. Male sexuality was viewed as normative, and therefore female sexual­ity was approached through the lens of male sexuality. Clelia Mosher (1863-1940) was ahead of her time, asking questions about sexuality that were quite different from those of […]

Courtesy of The Society for the Scientific Study of Sexuality Sexuality Research Moves to the United States Although Alfred Kinsey was mainly responsible for moving large-scale sexuality research to the United States, we also have to give credit to two hard-working female researchers, Clelia Mosher and Katharine Bement Davis, both of whom were working in […]