Kinsey then transferred his obsessive and taxonomic approach of research to the study of human sexuality. Much like the gall wasps he collected, Kinsey and his colleagues gathered thousands of “interviews” in which he or his researchers asked detailed questions about the sexual backgrounds of research participants.
The researchers scored an impressive 78.6 percent response rate, interviewing a total of 3,342 people. If the number of respondents was one-fifth Kinsey’s total, it was still a better snapshot of the nation.
In it, Kinsey debunked the idea of the vaginal orgasm, a finding later confirmed by sex researchers Virginia Johnson and William Masters, MD. The book also revealed that more than a quarter of women had had extramarital sex by the time they reached their 40s. "Sex Offenders: An Analysis of Types," published in 1965, was also influential.
In The Kinsey Data, Gebhard and Johnson (1979) reexamined the amount of homosexual experience in Kinsey's basic sample of noninstitutionalized males and females. They found 9.9% of the males in the College Sample had extensive homosexual experience. 3.7% of females had extensive homosexual experience.
Ratings 1–5 are for those who report varying levels of attraction or sexual activity with either sex.
The institute also allows researchers to use statistical software, such as PSPP or SPSS, for data analysis.
Together, they sold nearly a million copies and were translated in 13 languages.
Storms, plots eroticism on an X and Y axis. This allows for a much greater range of descriptions. Kinsey, Storm, and Klein are three of more than 200 scales to measure and describe sexual orientation.
Instead of assigning people to three categories—heterosexual, bisexual, and homosexual—the team used a seven-point scale.
The Kinsey Scale does not address all possible sexual identities. The Klein Sexual Orientation Grid and the Storms Scale have stepped in to further define sexual expression. The Klein Sexual Orientation Grid, developed by Fritz Klein, features seven variables and three situations in time: past, present, and ideal.
Taking the Kinsey test. An official Kinsey “test” does not exist, which is contrary to popular belief and many tests across the web. The original Kinsey research team assigned a number based on a person’s sexual history.
Diamond looked at studies done on the prevalence of homosexual behavior. He included some studies done on populations outside the U.S. The date ranges varied from country to country, but spanned 1948 to 1991. Those studies discussed were compared and displayed in tablular form.
A research team at the University of Chicago headed a project that conducted interviews in 1992 of a random probability sample of 3,432 men and women in the U.S. between the ages of 18-59 (National Health and Social Life Survey).
A national survey of 3321 men was conducted in 1991 by Batelle Human Affairs Research Center in Seattle, supported by a grant from the National Institute for Child Health and Human Development, to obtain data on the number of men engaging in sexual behaviors that put them at risk for AIDS.
Paul Gebhard (Gebhard 1979), a Kinsey research associate and later director of the Institute, described Kinsey's sampling method as "quota sampling accompanied by opportunistic collection" (p. 26).
Kinsey's samples are best for younger adults, particularly the college-educated; they are poorest for minorities and those from lower socioeconomic and educational levels. The original male sample included institutionalized men.
Alfred Kinsey spent 25 years conducting his famous sex surveys. From 1938 to 1963, he and his staff interviewed more than 18,000 men and women, asking about the relative frequency of practices like masturbation and premarital, extramarital, and homosexual sex. And almost half a century later, many of his results are still embedded in ...
He gathered his data by conducting detailed, face-to-face interviews, occasionally lasting six hours or longer, and then tabulating how many people said they did what.
Kinsey’s pioneering work is still one-of-a-kind because in all the time since, only a handful of sex researchers have even tried to match his breadth, depth, and scale. For all our obsession with sex, we’re skittish about studying it.
Laumann wasn’t perfect: His team conducted a small number of interviews with the subject’s partner in the room, reducing the likelihood of truthful answers to certain questions—involving affairs, say, or homosexuality.
That more concrete, less subjective approach has largely endured. But Kinsey is a famously flawed icon. His subjects were not representative of the population at large, and his data probably erred in the direction of the sexually active and adventurous.
Laumann is a former provost of the university, a venerable sociologist, and an expert on social networks.
The same problem plagued the next wave of sex surveys. Researcher Shere Hite is a cultural critic whose 1976 treatise on female sexuality, The Hite Report, became a rallying cry for feminists and an international best seller.
Kinsey and his team began by asking biographical questions: age, educational level, religion, parents' occupational class, and more. The next questions, about dreams and arousal, led into sexual desires and first experiences with the same straightforwardness.
Alfred Kinsey's work was motivated both by professional interest and personal concerns. Having established himself as a first-class taxonomist in his studies of gall wasps, the biologist was stunned to discover how little science knew about human sexual behavior -- and felt motivated to create new scholarship in the field.
Starting in 1938, thousands of Americans sat in Alfred Kinsey's interview chair. What was it like to give a sexual history to the Indiana University professor and his team of researchers?
Kinsey declared that one of his goals was simply to show that “nearly all the so-called sexual perversions fall within the range of biological normality,” or that no matter what sexual urge one may experience, this is natural, normal, and acceptable.
Kinsey was galled by his community’s prudishness. “If Americans were not so inhibited ,” Kinsey once stated to his class, “a 12-year-old would know most of the biology which I will have to give you in formal lectures as seniors and graduate students.”.
He maintained a loving relationship with his wife and had four children of his own.
Alfred Kinsey was born in Hoboken, N .J. in 1894. His father, Alfred Kinsey Sr., was a devout Protestant who taught at Steven’s Institute of Technology. The home was not an intimate one, and could perhaps have been what stirred Kinsey’s interest in sex. He expressed an interest in biology from a young age and attended nature classes at the YMCA in the summers on Lake Wawayanda in rural northwestern New Jersey. In 1911 he joined the Boy Scouts, becoming an Eagle Scout in 1913, and he excelled in the classroom and would be valedictorian of his high school.
Obviously smitten, Kinsey proposed to her some two months later and they were married in June 1921 . But by the time Kinsey had met and married his wife, he was inexperienced as far as love goes.
He had not dated before Clara nor had he had sex, and Kinsey had allegedly even questioned his own sexuality. In fact, when it came time for the couple to consummate, they struggled. But both being scientists, they did their research to determine how to be better partners.
Keystone Features/Getty Images Alfred Kinsey in June 1952. Alfred Kinsey has been hailed the “father of the sexual revolution.”. For one, his open and curious attitude about sex brought the subject into the mainstream.