Bob Michael
University of Chicago

Elsewhere I have offered an argument why research on sexual behavior and sexuality should be undertaken by the NICHD and why the subject should not be limited to its consequences for fertility and disease transmission. While these two consequences are vitally important and appropriate focuses of research, and they are indeed funded by the DBSB, there are many other aspects of sex that are not researched and should be. The rationale for the study of sexual behavior broadly is four-fold:

1. Sex is an important aspect of one's life and its successful management is important for well-being. For an institution such as the NICHD that is interested in healthy human development, understanding sexuality and sexual behavior and its healthy, utility-enhancing aspects (joys) should be a focus of attention.
   
   
2. Individuals, personal advisors (religious, medical, parents and peers), and policy- makers all must make judgments about aspects of sexual life and they should have better and more complete sources of information. This includes more and varied theoretical views about the role of sex in one's self-assessment of the quality of life and in the measured quality of interpersonal relations, and better and more detailed facts that provide evidence regarding antecedents and consequences of various sexual actions and attitudes. We do not have the knowledge base to guide individuals, advisors or policy makers in the judgments they must make. The reluctance to study sex over the past several decades has resulted in a particularly deficient body of knowledge and information about this life activity.
   
   
3. Even if our only interest were in the fertility and disease outcomes of sexual behavior, a deeper understanding of the broader aspects of sex will likely enrich our knowledge of these two.
   
   
4. Even if sex were not salient in terms of well-being, and even if there were no need for the guidance that might be provided by good research, sexual behavior is a common activity and a social one. If our scientific disciplines offer insights about the motivation for individual behavior and about the forces that create, define and limit social interactions and about the economic constraints and desires that affect behavior, then the study of sex is a challenge to us as social scientists: can our tools, concepts, and theories and our data-capturing capabilities and our data-analysis techniques help us understand this understudied dimension of private and social life?

   Sexuality and sexual behavior entail much more than fertility outcomes and disease consequences. Medicalizing sex diminishes its scope; problematizing sex limits its domain. The DBSB's interest in sex should not be focused exclusively on negative outcomes. The welfare enhancing pleasures of sex, the relationship between healthy sexuality and well-being, the role of sex in relationships and its positive public consequences should also be priority research agendas. I note here a few research opportunities, first regarding sexual behavior and secondly regarding sexuality. If I were designing a research program on sexual behavior, I would not limit the scope narrowly since there is little research basis on which to make a judgment about priorities. Rather, I would encourage work on theory and conceptualization that can lead to empirical testing, and on data creation since it is from empirical evidence that good theories are generated and bad ideas that have no basis in reality are rejected. There are (at least) four domains in which research should be undertaken: the individual, the sexual partnership, the sexual community or network or marketplace, and sexual policy issues that include many diverse topics from rape and sexual harassment and intimidation to sexual aesthetic beauty, from pornography and commercial sex to public nudity and to unusual expressions of sexuality.
   
   The individual's personal sexual behavior can be studied, perhaps building on well-known psychological theories, but perhaps more profitably by starting from the premises of other social sciences. Here one might expect research on why sex is such a critically important and salient factor to some and so seemingly inconsequential to others, or why sex is something men think about quite often according to survey evidence, while women to not do so. How are sexual skills acquired and how partner-specific are these skills? How important is fantasy, risk-taking, dominance, and love in motivating sexual behavior? What is the interpretation and motivation for sex from the perspectives of expression of affection, or physical exercise, or one's definition of ethical character. There is, naturally, a lifecycle to sexual behavior, partly determined by biological maturation and social expectation; the study of the sexual behavior over the lifetime, including a focus on adolescence and again on the elderly, would be important topics for study. There are not adequate sources of data regarding sexual behavior in the size, the content or detail, or the currency of data sets. The few data sets that now exist have shown convincingly, however, that mature citizens will cooperate in conventional surveys that focus upon sexual practices and attitudes so long as the motivation for the study is compelling and the safeguards of privacy and confidentiality are convincing.
   
   The sexual partnership is a key unit of analysis, much understudied because of complexities of confidentiality involved in obtaining information from both partners in a sexual relationship. The bargaining between the two parties, both in sexual terms and in the exchange between sex and other currencies of exchange are important issues. The relation between the quality of the sexual partnership and the non-sexual quality of the partnership is not well understood. Skill acquisition that is "partner specific," the evolution of expectations about sexual relations, and the dyadic understandings about fidelity or exclusivity are topics that should be studied. Intimacy in a relationship may or may not be linked to sexual relations. The role of intimacy in promoting love and commitment, and the potential substitution of non-sexual intimacies are research opportunities. Conversely, the nature of relationships that involve sex without intimacy or affection need to be better understood. Here there is no good national data on the individual and partnered views of adult sexual practices. The quality of the sex, the details about the sex, the interpretation of the sex and its surrounding context as described by the two partners both independently and jointly should be studied. The issues of sexuality at the individual level, in terms of attitudes toward risk-taking and fantasy for example, should also be investigated for the dyad.
   
   The issues surrounding the broader network of "stakeholders" in one's sexual activity is a separate domain of study. The competition for partners in the dating and sex markets, the ex ante bargaining and communication that results in, or does not result in, sex is not well studied. How localized are "sexual marketplaces" and what are the rates of transition among distinct marketplaces? How are they organized and by whom and with what purpose, commercial or otherwise? A recent article in the popular press (New York Times Magazine, May 20, 2001, p.51) noted that "pornography is a bigger business than professional football, basketball and baseball put together." What role does this socially unattractive product play and what mechanisms exist that promotes the socially attractive attributes of sex? Does this economic demand for pornography substitute for higher risk, disease-transmitting sexual expression?
   
   The public-policy issues related to sex are numerous and complex, made so by the divergent views about what is proper or inappropriate sexual behavior, views held apparently with deep convictions by subsets of adults. Sexual public policy is, however, unavoidable for areas of social externalities and in domains of sexual public good. On varied issues with public goods attributes such as access to abortion and public nudity, the strongly held divergent views make it very difficult to formulate consensus public policy. On certain issues of antisocial behavior, such as child sexual abuse and rape, consensus may be easier to achieve but programs to assist victims require more information about the long-term consequences of victimization. What policy instruments are in use that promote healthy sexual behavior and attitudes, ones that encourage respect for sexual diversity, effective expression of affection, and offer guidance regarding skills and practices that have been shown to promote sexual satisfaction and love?
   
   Sexuality, as distinct from behavior, also merits exploration as a research focus. Attitudes toward sex and its manifestations, opinions about what is proper sexually, identity as to sexual orientation and both self-awareness and social expression of one's sexual interests are not well understood and have influence on health and well-being as well as behavior. The development of sexuality in adolescence as distinct from the onset of sexual activity should be understood to be a research priority. It would be inappropriate to consider adolescent sexuality or adult sexuality important for study only if it involved some "problem" such as unwanted pregnancy or disease. The healthy development of sexual self-identity and sexual expression and knowledge and ability regarding self- and partnered-sexual pleasure has not been acceptable research agendas and they should be so. There needs to be research on the methods most effective for investigating sexuality.
   
   Sexual scripts and their meanings have been researched. How and why do these sexual scripts develop and how do they change over the life course and over the decades? What purposes do different ways of negotiating sexuality serve for different constituencies?
   
   Sexual behavior and sexuality have been shunned as a legitimate topic of social science research for many years. The need for more data, more scholarship, more attention, and ultimately more understanding should be a high priority for research within the portfolio of the DBSB.