Using Relationship Calendars to Improve Sexual Behavior Data among Kenyan Couples

描述（由申请人提供）：在整个撒哈拉以南非洲，少女和年轻妇女从事危险的性行为，导致不良的生殖和性健康结果。从青春期到成年早期这段时期的特点是与男性伴侣的各种关系的形成、演变和解体，从一次性接触到婚姻结合，同时性行为和风险也发生了类似的复杂变化。然而，在这些不同的伙伴关系中，性行为的调查数据往往相当有限，并且继续受到测量误差的影响，包括回忆和社会期望偏差。迫切需要新的数据收集方法来提高这些数据的范围和质量，本应用程序将测试两种创新方法来实现这些目标：首先，将通过在肯尼亚基苏木随机采访女性（18-24岁）和男性（18-29岁）的样本来创建匹配的伴侣数据集，并通过改进招募和采访其最近（去年）婚姻和非婚姻性伴侣的策略。将评估这一策略的可行性，以及选择偏差的程度和类型，这些偏差与最终参与研究的合作伙伴有关。是通过女性还是通过男性招募伴侣来获得更大、更少偏见的伴侣样本？其次，将设计一种新的调查方法，即关系历史日历（RHC），该方法收集调查前10年男女受访者的浪漫关系和性关系的详细、回顾性数据。RHC的问题结构和访谈过程都是为了最小化回忆和社会期望偏差而设计的。受访者及其匹配的性伴侣将被随机分配接受实验性RHC工具或比较标准的性伙伴关系问卷（SPQ），例如人口与健康调查中使用的问卷，从而允许跨工具类型和按受访者性别进行评估。将评估RHC与SPQ的可行性和可接受性。还将评估从RHC获得的性行为数据与SPQ的性行为数据的质量。该提案的最终目标是为研究人员提供可靠的方法来收集高度情境化的时变数据。可以对这些数据进行分析，以了解关系历史和夫妻动态如何影响撒哈拉以南非洲青年男女的性危险行为和极其恶劣的生殖健康结果。

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): Throughout sub-Saharan Africa, adolescent girls and young women engage in risky sexual behaviors that lead to poor reproductive and sexual health outcomes. The period from adolescence to early adulthood is characterized by the formation, evolution, and dissolution of diverse types of relationships with male partners from one-time encounters to marital unions coinciding with similarly complex changes in sexual behaviors and risk. Survey data on sexual behaviors within these diverse partnerships tend to be quite limited, however, and continue to suffer from measurement error, including recall and social desirability biases. New data collection approaches are urgently needed to improve both the scope and the quality of these data, and this application will test two innovative methods to meet these aims: First, a matched partner data set will be created by interviewing a random sample of women (aged 18-24) and men (aged 18-29) in Kisumu, Kenya, and by refining a strategy to recruit and interview their recent (in the last year) marital and non-marital sexual partners. The feasibility of this strategy will be assessed as well as the extent and type of selection bias with respect to which partners ultimately participate in the study. Is a larger and less biased sample of couples obtained by recruiting partners through women or through men? Second, a new survey method, the Relationship History Calendar (RHC), will be designed, which collects detailed, retrospective data on the romantic and sexual relationships of female and male respondents for up to 10 years prior to the survey. Both the structure of the questions and the interview process of the RHC are designed to minimize recall and social desirability biases. Respondents and their matched sexual partners will be randomly assigned to receive the experimental RHC instrument or a comparison standard Sexual Partnership Questionnaire (SPQ), such as the one used in the Demographic and Health Surveys, thereby allowing the assessment across instrument type and by sex of respondents. The feasibility and acceptability of the RHC compared to the SPQ will be assessed. The quality of sexual behavior data obtained from the RHC compared to that of the SPQ will also be evaluated. The ultimate goal of the proposal is to provide researchers with proven methods to collect highly contextualized, time-varying data. These data can be analyzed to understand how relationship histories and couple dynamics affect the sexual risk behaviors and extremely poor reproductive health outcomes of young women and men in sub-Saharan Africa.