"~ex~ ~ and Morality in the U. S. presents the major findings from a unique national<br >survey of American sexual norms and experiences. The survey was conducted in<br >1970 under the auspices of the Institute for Sex Research at Indiana University and<br >is based on interviews with more than 3，000 adults. This book incorporates the data，<br >and interpretations of the data， from those interviews.<br > "As in the earlier Kinsey volumes， the data reported in this book are based on<br >personal information provided by many individuals. However， this work differs<br >importantly from earlier ones in method and purpose. There is， for example， a<br >critical difference in the sampling techniques used to select individuals to be<br >interviewed. Although Kinsey and his associates interviewed large numbers of<br >males and females， their sampling procedures make it difficult to determine what<br >larger population their volunteer subjects represented. In contrast， those respon-<br >dents who agreed to participate in the 1970 survey constituted a national sample<br >carefully designed to represent the adult population of the United States.<br > "There is， in addition， a major difference in research goals between this study and<br >the earlier Kinsey reports. For members of the early Kinsey team the primary<br >objective was to describe human sexual behavior. They were emphatically not<br >interested in the moral norms that guided the reported conduct. The 1970 survey，<br >on the other hand， not only attempted to depict patterned sexual experiences， but it<br >also took the further and significant step of asking respondents for their moral<br >judgments about certain sexual activitites. Indeed， it was the first and， as far as can<br >be ascertained， it remains the only national survey centered wholly on the sexual<br >experiences and the sexual norms of a representative sample of the adult American<br >population.<br > "When similar national surveys are conducted in the future--five， ten， twenty， or<br >fifty years from now--their value as comparative instruments will obviously be<br >substantially enhanced by the data that appear in Sex and Morality in the U.S. In<br >particular， because they were collected well before the epidemic became evident，<br >these data will probably be indispensable to any attempt to describe the effects of<br >AIDS on American sexual morality and behavior."<br > --from the Introduction， by Hubert J. O Gorman<br >