Sex education in traditional tribal cultures is examined for clues as to sex education and sex roles as they would have developed early in human history. Longitudinal ethnographic studies also provide information on human sexuality in general and on different ways in which societies are shaped around issues of sex, the transmission of attitudes about sex from one generation to the next, and so on. One problem in examining any traditional society is that researchers may bring biases from their own culture to their work and so may make errors in judgment as to the meaning of certain practices or even about details of tribal behavior. This is a problem in any kind of ethnographic study, but it may be a particular problem with studies of sexual mores because of the importance given sex in Western society as well as the ways in which sexual behavior and sexual thoughts have been repressed at different times in Western society. A consideration of how some of the studies of traditional tribal cultures have erred shows the sort of biases that can creep into this research and the kinds of problems that can arise as a consequence.
The study of gender roles and the socialization process is subject to certain restrictions and certain limitations based on the nature of the process of investigation itself. In Western society, gender has become politicized. Leacock notes that the very concepts of equality and inequality may be an ethnocentric misunderstanding Westerners bring to an analysis of sex roles in non-Western societies (Leacock 247). This indicates that anthropologists need to exercise care in imposing their own biases and background on their research. Slocum reiterates this with reference specifically to male bias in anthropological research:
The perspective of women is, in many ways, equally foreign to an anthropology that has been developed and pursued primarily by males. There is a strong male bias in the questions ask...