Britain's 'Little Kinsey' survey unearthed

BRIGHTON, England, Sept. 26 (UPI) -- A British survey modeled on the Kinsey Report was buried in university archives for decades because the findings were so scandalous.

The 1949 Mass Observation Report found that one in five of the men surveyed admitted having had a homosexual experience while one in five women acknowledged an extramarital affair, The Telegraph reports. One quarter of the men said they had visited prostitutes.

The survey also found a greater acceptance of non-traditional sexual behavior, with 80 percent of respondents willing to accept divorce and half of women and 68 percent of men saying they had had premarital sex.

The results were never released and sat in the archives at Sussex University. Next month, BBC4 airs a documentary, "Little Kinsey," on the report.

Critics say that the survey overstated some types of behavior with the high rate of homosexual experience partly a result of World War II when many men were trapped in all-male environments and of Britain's all-male boarding school culture. They also suggest that most of the women surveyed were middle-class and more likely than working class women to put their marriages at risk.