Patterns of Asexuality in the United States.

In this article we use data from the 2002 National Survey of Family Growth (NSFG) to ascertain and analyze patterns of asexuality in the United States. We first discuss definitions of asexuality. The limited literature on asexuality presents three kinds of definitions dealing with sexuality, namely, definitions based on one's behavior, desires, and self-identification. Given the several definitions, we use a social constructionist perspective in this analysis, as against an essentialist approach, and measure the phenomenon in several ways. We then present a review of the literature on asexuality. We know of only one truly nationally representative study of asexuality, a survey of 18,000 British residents undertaken in the early 1990s by Johnson and colleagues (1994) and analyzed later by Bogaert (2004). We discuss its major findings and conclusions. We turn next to the 2002 NSFG, discuss briefly its approach, conduct and data, and show the three NSFG questions we will use to measure asexuality; two provide imperfect data on asexuality, and one provides quite good data. We then use the NSFG respondent sampling weights to produce several sets of unbiased estimates of the percentages of persons in the U.S. population, aged 15-44, who are asexual. Each set of estimates is based on one of the three definitions of asexuality. Finally, we use the three definitions of asexuality and develop seven groups or categories of asexuals, depending on their answers to the three questions. We compare and contrast the characteristics of asexuals in each group with those of sexuals. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]