626
PAUL A. ROBINSON
SEX FOR THE SEVENTIES
SEXUAL BEHAVIOR IN THE 1970S. By Morton Hunt. Playboy Pr....
$10.95.
Having read snippets of the
Playboy
serialization of this book in
the barber shop, I approached the finished product with a wary eye. "The
most extensive national survey since Kinsey," proclaims the jacket, and I
suppose that's true. Compared with Kinsey, however,
Sexual Behavior in the
19705
is distinctly lightweight. It is, one might say, a quickie, commissioned by
the Playboy Foundation no more than three years ago and undertaken by the
author~n
his own admission-for financial reward. Its findings are based
on 2026 questionnaires administered by the Research Guild, Inc., "an inde–
pendent market-survey and behavioral-research organization with headquar–
ters in Chicago." The respondents, who were selected to represent a cross
section of the nation, met in groups of sixteen with a staff member from the
Guild and filled in their questionnaires "only after extensive discussion" (the
purpose of which , presumably, was to clarify ambiguities and break down
inhibitions). The data from the questionnaires were then fleshed out by ma–
terials from two hundred interviews taped by Hunt and his wife.
The Kinsey Reports rested on a much more substantial empirical base.
For one thing, Kinsey's sample, gathered over a period of fifteen years, was
nine times as large as Hunt's. He could therefore make distinctions for which
Hunt lacks the statistical means. The larger sample also meant that his find–
ings with respect to relatively unusual sexual practices are much more reliable
than Hunt's. (When Hunt attempts to discuss what he calls sexual deviance,
the actual cases he has to work with are so few that his conclusions amount to
little more than educated guesswork.) Perhaps most important of all, Kinsey
based his research not on questionnaires but on systematic personal inter–
views, which, he argued persuasively, were far better suited to elicit precise
and candid sexual histories.
There are grounds, then, for doubting the soundness of Hunt's
methodology. There is also much to be objected
to
in his manner. He implies
that the Playboy Foundation will be displeased with his conclusions since they
fail to support the famous playboy philosophy. But the Foundation will find a
great deal
to
satisfy its prurient interests in the book's format. Each chapter is
prefaced by a page of appetizers from the taped case histories that will appear
at the chapter's end. The intervening statistical analysis is thus made palatable,
while the analysis itself legitimizes what might otherwise appear a coltec–
tion of dirty stories. In general Hunt lacks Kinsey's restraint, and hence his
irony. Although he eschews the playboy philosophy, he is not entirely free of
