a nonprofit corporation affiliated with Indiana University in Bloomington, Indiana, U.S., founded in 1947 under the sponsorship of the zoologist Alfred C. Kinsey (Kinsey, Alfred Charles), with whose pioneering studies of American sexual behaviour the institute became synonymous. It is dedicated to the scientific study of a broad range of human sexual behaviour and has attempted to establish an authoritative library of sexual behaviour, beginning in the early 1950s to gather films, art objects, diaries, personal histories, and other literary and graphic material relating to eroticism and sexual behaviour.

The first two works sponsored by the institute were Sexual Behavior in the Human Male (1948) and Sexual Behavior in the Human Female (1953), both of which were widely recognized as comprehensive and important surveys of the norms, extent, and variability of American sexual behaviour.