Kinsey Reports

The Kinsey Reports are two books on human sexual behavior, Sexual Behavior in the Human Male (1948) and Sexual Behavior in the Human Female (1953), by Dr. Alfred Kinsey, Wardell Pomeroy and others. Kinsey was a zoologist at Indiana University and the founder of the Institute for Sex Research.

The research astounded the general public and was immediately controversial and sensational. The findings caused shock and outrage, both because they challenged conventional beliefs about sexuality and because they discussed subjects that had previously been taboo.

Sexual orientation
Probably the most widely cited part of the Kinsey Reports regard the prevalence of different sexual orientations — especially to support a claim that 10% of the population is gay. In fact, the findings are not so straightforward, and Kinsey himself avoided and disapproved of using terms like homosexual or heterosexual to describe individuals, asserting that sexuality is prone to change over time, and that sexual behavior can be understood both as physical contact as well as purely psychological phenomena (desire, sexual attraction, fantasy). Instead of three categories (heterosexual, bisexual and homosexual), an eight-category system was used. The Kinsey scale ranked sexual behavior from 0 to 6, with 0 being completely heterosexual and 6 completely homosexual. A 1 was considered predominantly heterosexual and only incidentally homosexual, a 2 mostly heterosexual and more than incidentally homosexual, a 3 equally homosexual and heterosexual, and so on. An additional category X was created for those who experienced no sexual desire.

The reports also state that nearly 46% of the male subjects had "reacted" sexually to persons of both sexes in the course of their adult lives, and 37% had at least one homosexual experience. 11.6% of white males (ages 20-35) were given a rating of 3 (about equal heterosexual and homosexual experience/response) throughout their adult lives. The study also reported that 10% of American males surveyed were "more or less exclusively homosexual for at least three years between the ages of 16 and 55" (in the 5 to 6 range).

7% of single females (ages 20-35) and 4% of previously married females (ages 20-35) were given a rating of 3 (about equal heterosexual and homosexual experience/response) on the 8-point Kinsey Heterosexual-Homosexual Rating Scale for this period of their lives. 2 to 6% of females, aged 20-35, were more or less exclusively homosexual in experience/response, and 1 to 3% of unmarried females aged 20-35 were exclusively homosexual in experience/response.

Marital coitus
The average frequency of marital sex reported by women was 2.8 times a week, in late teens; 2.2 times a week, by age 30; and 1.0 times a week, by age 50.

Extra-marital sex
Kinsey estimated that approximately 50% of all married males had some extramarital experience at some time during their married lives. Among the sample, 26% of females had had extramarital sex by their forties. Between 1 in 6 and 1 in 10 females from age 26 to 50 were engaged in extramarital sex.

Sadomasochism
12% of females and 22% of males reported having an erotic response to a sadomasochistic story, and 55% of females and 50% of males reported having responded erotically to being bitten.

Methodology
Data was gathered primarily by means of interviews, which were encoded to maintain confidentiality. Other data sources included the diaries of convicted child molesters. The data were later computerized for processing. All of this material, including the original researchers' notes, remains available from the Kinsey Institute to qualified researchers who demonstrate a need to view such materials. The institute also allows researchers to submit SPSS programs to be run on the data.

Subject matter of the report lent itself to sensationalism. Based on his data and findings, others claimed that 10% of the population are homosexual, and that women enhance their prospects of satisfaction in marriage by masturbating previously. Neither claim was made by Kinsey.

Objections on moral grounds
The books have been widely criticized by conservatives as promoting degeneracy. Sexual Behavior in the Human Male has been on two paleoconservative lists of the worst books of modern times. It was #3 on the Intercollegiate Studies Institute's 50 Worst Books of the Twentieth Century and #4 on Human Events' Ten Most Harmful Books of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries.

Objections to statistical approach
In addition to moral objections, academic criticisms pertain to sample selection and sample bias. In 1948, the same year as the original publication, a committee of the American Statistical Association, including notable statisticians such as John Tukey condemned the sampling procedure. Tukey was perhaps the most vocal critic, saying, "A random selection of three people would have been better than a group of 300 chosen by Mr. Kinsey." Criticism principally revolved around the over-representation of some groups in the sample: 25% were, or had been, prison inmates, and 5% were male prostitutes.

A related criticism, by some of the leading psychologists of the day, notably Abraham Maslow, was that he (Kinsey) did not consider the bias created by the data representing only those who were willing to participate in discussion of taboo topics. Most Americans were reluctant to discuss the intimate details of their sex lives even with their spouses or close friends; the Kinsey database was derived from the possibly atypical minority who would tell their secrets to total (if learned) strangers.

In a response to these criticisms, Paul Gebhard, Kinsey's successor as director of the Kinsey Institute for Sex Research, spent years "cleaning" the Kinsey data of its purported contaminants, removing, for example, all material derived from prison populations in the basic sample. In 1979, Gebhard (with Alan B. Johnson) published The Kinsey Data: Marginal Tabulations of the 1938-1963 Interviews Conducted by the Institute for Sex Research. Their conclusion, to Gebhard's surprise he claimed, was that none of Kinsey's original estimates were significantly affected by this bias: that is, prison population, male prostitutes, and those who willingly participated in discussion of previously taboo sexual topics had the same statistical tendency. The problem of getting unbiased population samples in socially taboo subjects were discussed by Professor Martin Duberman, who wrote


 * Instead of Kinsey's 37% (men who had at least one homosexual experience), Gebhard and Johnson came up with 36.4%; the 10% figure (men who were "more or less exclusively homosexual for at least three years between the ages of 16 and 55"), with prison inmates excluded, came to 9.9% for white, college-educated males and 12.7% for those with less education. And as for the call for a "random sample," a team of independent statisticians studying Kinsey's procedures had concluded as far back as 1953 that the unique problems inherent in sex research precluded the possibility of obtaining a true random sample, and that Kinsey's interviewing technique had been "extraordinarily skillful". They characterized Kinsey's work overall as "a monumental endeavor."

Organized opposition
Some conservative groups including RSVPAmerica, headed by Dr. Judith A. Reisman, and the Family Research Council have stated that they aim to discredit the Kinsey Reports. These groups often accuse Kinsey's work of promoting unhealthy sexual practices or morals.

RSVPAmerica advertises publications such as Kinsey: Crimes & Consequences and Kinsey, Sex and Fraud: The Indoctrination of a People, both by Reisman, and the video "The Children of Table 34", funded by the Family Research Council. The campaign website states that the video "presents the story of Dr. Reisman's discovery of Dr. Alfred Kinsey's systematic sexual abuse of 317 male children."

In its 1998 response to the core allegations made by Reisman, Kinsey Institute director John Bancroft stated that the data on children in tables 31–34 of Kinsey's Sexual Behavior of the Human Male came largely from the journal of one adult pedophile, who had illegal sexual interaction with these children. The man's journal started in 1917, long before the Kinsey Reports. Bancroft further stated that Kinsey explicitly pointed out the illegality of the man's actions, but that he granted his source anonymity. In addition, Bancroft reiterated the Kinsey Institute's claim that Kinsey never had any sexual interaction with children, nor did he employ others to do so, and that he interviewed children in the presence of their parents.

Other attacks have centered on the sex life and motives of Kinsey himself (see Alfred C. Kinsey), or have claimed that the Kinsey Reports are themselves responsible for a "decay in society."

Conjecture of child abuse
In the Kinsey Reports are data concerning pre-adolescent orgasms. Particularly controversial are tables 30 through 34 of the male volume. For example, table 34 is, "Examples of multiple orgasm in pre-adolescent males. Some instances of higher frequencies." A typical entry indicates that a certain 7 year-old had seven orgasms in a three hour time period. Kinsey's critics state that data such as these could have only been obtained by direct observation of or participation in child abuse. In particular they point to the information given in table 32, "Speed of pre-adolescent orgasm; Duration of stimulation before climax; Observations timed with second hand or stop watch," and say that the only way such precise data could have been collected was through cooperation with child molesters.

The Kinsey Institute states unequivocally on its website, "[Kinsey] did not carry out experiments on children; he did not hire, collaborate, or persuade people to carry out experiments on children." It goes on to say, "Kinsey clearly stated in his male volume the sources of information about children's sexual responses. The bulk of this information was obtained from adults recalling their own childhoods. Some was from parents who had observed their children, some from teachers who had observed children interacting or behaving sexually, and Kinsey stated that there were nine men who he had interviewed who had sexual experiences with children who had told him about how the children had responded and reacted. We believe that one of those men was the source of the data listed in the book."

Context and significance
The Kinsey Reports are associated with a change in public perception of sexuality. Despite the fact that Kinsey did not explicitly claim that his sampling subjects are representative of overall population of U.S.; and in fact explicitly stated that he was fully aware of the fact that his sample was not representative, many uninformed, whether in support or criticism, did. In the 1960s, following the introduction of the first oral contraceptive, this change was to be expressed in the sexual revolution. Also in the 1960s, Masters and Johnson published their investigations into the physiology of sex, breaking taboos and misapprehensions similar to those Kinsey had broken more than a decade earlier in a closely related field.

To what extent the Reports produced or promoted this change and to what extent they merely expressed it and reflected the conditions that were producing it is a matter of much debate and speculation.