The report entitled Sexual Behavior in the Human Female is the result of research conducted by a number of scientists. This report was the second, after the volume on male sexual behavior, in a projected series. Like the first book the present volume is often referred to by the phrase the "Kinsey Report," after the originator of the project, and its lead researcher, Dr. Alfred Kinsey, a biologist from Indiana University. On being asked by the University to teach a course in sex education Kinsey was shocked to discover the near complete lack of reliable information on the subject. An entomologist by training, Kinsey found that the few available studies of the subject of sexual behavior "lacked the statistical validity [he] deemed essential" and so he began to conduct his own interviews (Brecher 112). Kinsey began his research with the decision that because so much of people's sex lives was normally hidden it would not be until information could be accumulated and statistically analyzed that scientists would have even a preliminary picture of the subject--the same basic method that had guided his previous study of gall wasps. Though a few researchers, such as Havelock Ellis, had previously used statistics in a limited way, Kinsey was interested in developing a pool of data that took in a wide variety of individuals from various classes, locations, and age groups. Kinsey's studies were the outcome of years of accumulation of data and the first systematic analysis of varieties of human sexual behavior. Sexual Behavior in the Human Female applies statistical analysis to the interview-derived sexual histories--activities, knowledge, feelings, opinions, and attitudes--of 5,940 white American women and presents a detailed survey of the physiology of sexual response in men and women. It is rigorously scientific, in design and presentation, throughout.
The report begins with a clear statement of the scientific objective which was s...