The correspondence of data gathered from husband and wife: implications for family planning studies

The impact of touch-tone data entry on reports of HIV and STD risk behaviors in telephone interviews

Respondents concerns about privacy can decrease reporting of HIV and STD risk behaviors in general population telephone surveys. The purpose of this paper is to describe the results of an experimental study evaluating whether one method for increasing privacy, touch-tone data entry (TTDE), is effective in increasing estimates of sexual behaviors from a population-based survey. We conducted a random-digit-dial telephone survey of adults in New Jersey (n = 405), with half the respondents using TTDE for answering sexual behavior questions. TTDE led to increased reports of same-sex sexual behavior, certain HIV and STD risk factors, and concern about one s risk for HIV and STD transmission. TTDE also narrowed the difference between men s and women s reports of the number of different sexual partners over the past 10 years. The feasibility and limitations of TTDE are discussed, as well as possible alternative interpretations that consider the impact of TTDE on the dynamics of the interaction between the respondent and the interviewer.

Socioeconomic status and use of family planning among Ghanaian government workers

The low utilization of family planning methods in Ghana, and by inference in much of Africa, is explained by reference to traditional sociocultural values held by males. A LISREL model is tested using data collected from educated males working in the Ghanaian government. Among the findings are that lack of couple communication, segregated conjugal role relationships, and male-dominated decision-making are all significant predictors of non-use of family planning methods (pronatalist attitude is not). Possession of knowledge of family planning among Ghanaian males alone is unlikely to initiate use of family planning methods. Additional sociodemographic and modernization findings are reported.

Modeling household fertility decisions: a nonlinear simultaneous probit model

"This article proposes new methods for modeling household fertility decisions....Specifically, we model the trivariate distribution of wife's stated desire for additional children, husband's stated desire for additional children, and subsequent fertility. In the model, the stated desire of the husband (wife) is viewed as an indicator of the husband's (wife's) latent disposition toward subsequent fertility. The husband's (wife's) disposition is allowed to depend on the wife's (husband's) disposition. The two dispositions are then combined to generate the couple's propensity for subsequent fertility. We show how such models can be estimated and tested and how the parameters can be used to assess the relative influence of each partner on the propensity." The model is tested using U.S. data from the Princeton Fertility Study for the 1950s and 1960s. The results indicate that "both husband's disposition score and wife's disposition score affect the propensity score, and, under some additional assumptions, that husbands and wives have equal relative influence on the propensity."

Contraception: answers of wives and husbands compared in a survey of Swiss couples

In a survey of Swiss couples, the husband-wife agreement on contraception (current use, and methods ever used) is high and husbands are generally as well informed on the use of contraceptive methods as their wives. The data indicate that the use of condoms may be underestimated in interviewing women only and that the contraceptive behaviour of a couple is related to the fertility preferences of both wife and husband.

Individual and couple utility of children

Models specifying the utility of another child as either a couple or an individual experience and incorporating variations in the measurement properties of responses about child utility and expectations are estimated with data from the U.S. Value of Children survey. Full information, maximum likelihood analyses indicate that child utility is an individual experience of wives and husbands rather than a shared couple experience. That is, differences in the measurement properties of wives’ and husbands’ responses do not account entirely for the less than perfect correlations between their responses. These findings demonstrate the importance of estimating errors in measurement in the analysis of wives’ and husbands’ responses about the utility of children, and they challenge the assumption that marital partners share the utility of children.