Advancing Measurement and Analysis of Sensitive Behaviors in the United States

 描述(由申请人提供)：在我国与生育有关的初级调查中，普遍存在对堕胎的漏报，这损害了对堕胎、怀孕和生育的研究。人们对人工流产在美国生育率中的作用知之甚少，因为它仍然是一种高度敏感的行为，而且到目前为止，社会调查还未能得出关于女性怀孕经历的准确报告。研究人员长期以来一直认识到美国家庭调查中对堕胎的低估，但近20年来，在提高女性堕胎报告质量方面没有取得实质性进展。为了获得对美国生育行为的准确测量，并了解堕胎在女性生活中的作用，我们建议开发新的技术并改进现有的堕胎报告方法，其结果与改进其他敏感行为的测量相关。该项目将侧重于两个相关的目标。目标1将在三个广泛使用的具有全国代表性的调查中调查堕胎漏报的水平和相关性。使用许多国家家庭成长调查(NSFG)的数据资源，我们将利用很少使用的社会背景地理编码衡量标准，确定个人和背景水平的相关性。此外，我们还将研究男女在调查模式上的报告差异，以及从采访者和行政报告中得出的调查水平因素的影响。我们将比较NSFG和其他两个具有全国代表性的主要生育率调查(1997年全国青年纵向调查和全国青少年健康纵向研究[Add Health])中妇女漏报的模式，这些调查使用不同的堕胎问题措辞和管理手段。最后，我们将利用Add Health中对完整孕产史的重复测量，检查在两个时间点对女性和男性先前堕胎的回顾报告的一致性。目标2将在未来的调查中开发、测试和评估改进堕胎报告的新方法。我们将根据目标1、认知访谈和焦点小组的调查结果，以及对目前正在开发的初步实验测试的分析，制定降低报告敏感性的战略。这些发现和专家小组的指导将被用于在全国互联网调查中设计和测试10个随机实验武器。我们对实验武器的初步计划是测试不同问题措辞对堕胎报告的影响，以及问题在调查中的位置。这些发现将极大地改进美国对堕胎和其他敏感行为的测量，从而推动生育行为和调查方法领域向前发展，从而为研究打开更广阔的可能性。

 DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): Pervasive underreporting of abortion in our nation's primary fertility-related surveys compromises the study of abortion, pregnancy and fertility. Relatively little is known about the role of induced abortion in American fertility because it remains a highly sensitive behavior, and social surveys to date have not been able to elicit accurate reporting of women's pregnancy experiences. Researchers have long recognized the underreporting of abortion in U.S. household surveys, but no substantial progress in improving the quality of women's abortion reports has been made in nearly twenty years. To obtain accurate measures of U.S. fertility behaviors and to understand the role of abortion in women's lives, we propose to develop new techniques and improve existing methodologies for measuring abortion reporting, with findings relevant to improvements in the measurement of other sensitive behaviors. This project will focus on two related objectives. Aim 1 will investigate levels and correlates of abortion underreporting in three widely-used nationally representative surveys. Using a number of National Survey of Family Growth (NSFG) data resources, we will identify individual- and contextual-level correlates of underreporting, exploiting rarely- used geocoded measures of social context. Additionally, we will examine discrepancies in reporting by survey mode for women and men, and the impact of survey-level factors drawn from interviewer and administrative reports. We will compare the patterns of women's underreporting between the NSFG and two other major nationally-representative fertility surveys with varied abortion question wordings and means of administration (National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1997 and the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health [Add Health]). Finally, we will examine the consistency of retrospective reporting of prior abortions at two points in time for both women and men, utilizing the repeated measurement of full pregnancy histories in Add Health. Aim 2 will develop, test and evaluate new approaches to improve abortion reporting in future surveys. We will develop strategies to reduce sensitivity of reporting, building on findings from Aim 1, cognitive interviews and focus groups, and analysis of initial experimental tests currently under development. These findings and guidance from an Expert Panel will be used to design and test 10 randomized experimental arms in a national internet survey. Our initial plans for the experimental arms are to test the effect on abortion reporting of different question wordings and the placement of the questions within the survey. These findings will move the fields of fertility behaviors and survey methodology forward by significantly improving the measurement of abortion and other sensitive behaviors in the United States, thereby opening up wider possibilities for research.