Many of us have done it--filled out those magazine surveys asking about our sex lives, partners, and practices. We've read the results with guilty pleasure, and measured our own behavior against them. And we have noted the results of more scholarly sex surveys, always comparing our behavior to that of the respondents.
But who asks these questions? And why? What effects do they have on policy and perception? In her new book, "Kiss and Tell: Surveying Sex in the Twentieth Century" (Harvard University Press), sociologist Julia A. Ericksen looks behind the sensational answers to examine the questions, questioners, and questionnaires.
"Sexual behavior is a volatile and sensitive topic, and surveys designed to reveal it have both great power and great limits," writes Ericksen, an associate professor of sociology at Temple University. "By revealing the private behavior of others, they provide a way for people to evaluate their own behavior and even the meaning of information the surveys produce. And they provide experts with information they urgently seek to understand society and develop social policy."
"Kiss and Tell" takes a clear-eyed look at approximately 750 sex surveys taken over the last 100 years, paying close attention to the surveys' questions and to the surveyors' changing concerns. Ericksen examines surveys in light of marital and premarital sex, adolescence, AIDS, and politics, among other backdrops, and looks at how they have influenced policy and perceptions in these areas.
Ericksen first taught on the sociology of sexuality in the late 1970s, and had also worked on and been involved in survey research and feminist theory and practice. By 1992, after 12 years in academic administration, she had become quite curious about the way the social sciences produce knowledge, particularly in less easily investigated areas like sexuality. After hearing that the federal government had pulled funding for a pair of sexual-behavior surveys, she decided to investigate.
"I wanted to find out why it was so difficult to do this kind of research," Ericksen says. "People who do these surveys feel embattled in doing them, and with justification. . . . Sexuality is a topic around which other kinds of battles get fought. The fighting is often a metaphor for other fears or concerns Americans have."
Ericksen dedicated her book "to the hundreds of men and women who undertook surveys in the belief that the truth about sex can set us free." She says, "Most but not all surveyors want to liberate sex from what they see as a repressive Victorian morality. They see social problems of the day as sexual problems." Ericksen believes the surveys generally "do a really good job of reassuring people" and have "probably changed behavior."
Nevertheless, "Kiss and Tell" does not gloss over sex surveys' inherent shortcomings. "So what kind of knowledge, if any, can surveys provide?" Ericksen writes. "They help shape social reality, and in the competent surveys, some of the shape they give to reality is based on empirical fact. But even here the knowledge they provide is limited. Sex surveys cannot reveal the essential nature of sexuality."
"Kiss and Tell" offers a variety of reform suggestions. Social scientists must acknowledge their own role in setting research priorities and "look critically not only at the quality of our surveys but at our role in creating knowledge." Ericksen adds: "This means no longer claiming to stand above the fray but recognizing that research choices, agendas in making those choices, and presentation of findings are political activities and not just neutral scientific endeavors. Sex researchers cannot avoid involvement in the ideological wars of the late twentieth century. . . . To face the future, to allow experts to play a role as interpreter of voices, researchers need a new vision, new humility, and new honesty about the possibilities and limitations of their work."
Assisting Ericksen with the book was Sally A. Steffen, who began working on the project with Ericksen while a student at Temple's Law School. Steffen is now an associate at Ballard Spahr Andrews & Ingersoll, LLP, in Philadelphia.
Ericksen, a resident of Philadelphia's West Mount Airy section, has taught at Temple since 1975. From 1981 to 1992 she served in administrative positions. Ericksen earned her bachelor's from the University of London, her master's from the University of Michigan, and her Ph.D. from the University of Pennsylvania.