Patterns of Asexuality in the United States
Dudley L. Poston, Jr.
and
Amanda K. Baumle
Department of Sociology
Texas A&M University
e-mail:
Introduction
In this article we use data from the 2002 National Survey of Family Growth (NSFG)
(National Center for Health Statistics, 2004) to ascertain and analyze patterns of asexuality in the
United States. We first discuss various 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 of asexuality, 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.
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