Ethnicity in 25 years of published sexuality research: 1971–1995

We investigated the degree to which ethnicity has been a focus of sexuality research by coding all research reports published in The Journal of Sex Research (n = 454) and Archives of Sexual Behavior (n = 673) between 1971 and 1995 with regard to the ethnic composition of the sample and whether ethnicity was a variable used in the research. Overall, only about one quarter of the articles even included a description of the ethnic composition of the sample; however, likelihood of describing the ethnicity of research participants increased over the 25‐year span. Of those articles in which ethnicity of research participants was described, the ethnic diversity of samples used in sexuality research increased over time. Overall, ethnicity was considered a relevant variable in only 7.3% of published research articles. Such ethnically‐focused research most often was based on community samples and was equally as likely to be race homogeneous as race comparative in approach. Our results are discussed with regard to future research on ethnicity and human sexuality.