John Gagnon—a sociologist who shifted the ground in sex research by proposing that sexual behavior could better be understood by looking at social forces rather than biology or psychology—died Feb. 11 in Palm Springs, California, at age 84, The New York Times reported. His wife said the cause of death was pancreatic cancer.
Gagnon began his career as a researcher at the Institute for Sex Research (now the Kinsey Institute) at Indiana University in the 1960s, and in the 1990s carried out a comprehensive survey of sexual behavior in the United States.
In the late 1980s—working with two colleagues at the University of Chicago and the National Opinion Research Center—Gagnon designed the first comprehensive survey of sexual behavior since the Kinsey reports of the late 1940s and early 1950s. The study offered a more accurate picture of U.S. residents’ sex lives, with reliable numbers on gay men and their behavior that were needed as the AIDS crisis progressed.
The article is at www.nytimes.com/2016/02/26/us/john-gagnon-sociologist-who-explored-human-sexuality-dies-at-84.html?mwrsm=Facebook&_r=1.