Kinsey Reports
Jean Brown, Cornelia Christenson, Dorothy Collins, Hedwig Leser, and Eleanor Roehr were all acknowledged as research assistants on the book's title page.
The sociological data underlying the analysis and conclusions found in Sexual Behavior in the Human Male was collected from approximately 5,300 men over a fifteen-year period.
[3] The two best-selling books were immediately controversial, both within the scientific community and the general public, because they challenged conventional beliefs about sexuality and discussed subjects that had previously been taboo.
Kinsey built up academic prestige over decades of study and gained the support of Rockefeller family-backed philanthropists for a large-scale analysis.
Data was gathered primarily by means of subjective report interviews, conducted according to a structured questionnaire memorized by the experimenters (but not marked on the response sheet in any way).
Parts of the Kinsey Reports regarding diversity in sexual orientations are frequently used to support the common estimate of 10% for homosexuality in the general population.
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.
[8] 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 on the Kinsey scale).
[12] The Kinsey scale is used to measure a person's overall balance of heterosexuality and homosexuality, and takes into account both sexual experience and psychosexual reactions.
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.
[28] In 1954, leading statisticians, including William Gemmell Cochran, Frederick Mosteller, John Tukey, and W. O. Jenkins issued for the American Statistical Association a critique of Kinsey's 1948 Male report, stating: Critics are justified in their objections that many of the most interesting and provocative statements in the [Kinsey 1948] book are not based on the data presented therein, and it is not made clear to the reader on what evidence the statements are based.
Further, the conclusions drawn from data presented in the book are often stated by KPM [Kinsey, Pomeroy, and Martin] in much too bold and confident a manner.
[32]) 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.
[5]: 147 [37][38]: 9 This may be explained in part by Kinsey's interview style, which focused on in-depth conversations with subjects carried out by himself or highly trained members of his team; they emphasized creating rapport with the interviewee and making them feel comfortable and secure.
[39] Modern interviewers tend to be less thoroughly trained and emphasize scientific detachment, which may make respondents less likely to share sensitive personal details.
[45] Together, the Kinsey Reports sold three-quarters of a million copies and were translated into thirteen languages, and may be considered as some of the most successful and influential scientific books of the 20th century.
[citation needed] Additionally, in 1966 Masters and Johnson would publish the first of two texts, cataloguing their investigations into the physiology of sex, breaking taboos and misapprehensions similar to those Kinsey had confronted more than a decade earlier in a closely related field.
