Family Planning for Strangers: An Experiment on the Validity of Reported Contraceptive Use

<div><p>Sterilization levels reported in the Dominican Republic appear well above what we would normally expect given prevailing patterns in the region. We suspect that the use of strangers as interviewers—the normative approach in data collection in both developed and developing country settings—may be partly responsible for this result, and may underlie a long history of bias in family planning data. We present findings from a field experiment conducted in a Dominican town in 2010, where interviewer assignment was randomized by level of preexisting level of familiarity between interviewer and respondent. In our data, sterilization use is higher when the interviewer is an outsider, as opposed to someone known to the respondent or from the same community. In addition, high sterilization use is correlated with a propensity of respondents to present themselves in a positive light to interviewers. These results call into question the routine use of strangers and outsiders as interviewers in demographic and health surveys.</p></div

Household response rates and count distribution of outcomes, by strata and type of interviewer.

<p>Dominican Republic Interviewer-Respondent Familiarity Project Data, 2010.</p

Multinomial Logistic Estimates of Effect of Interviewer Familiarity on Reported Use of Modern Non-Permanent Methods or Sterilization versus Non Use, by Strata, Dominican Republic Interviewer-Respondent Familiarity Project Data, 2010.

<p>Multinomial Logistic Estimates of Effect of Interviewer Familiarity on Reported Use of Modern Non-Permanent Methods or Sterilization versus Non Use, by Strata, Dominican Republic Interviewer-Respondent Familiarity Project Data, 2010.</p

Respondent descriptive statistics and statistical tests for differences across interview categories.

<p>Dominican Republic Interviewer-Respondent Familiarity Project Data, 2010 (n = 1,127).</p

Logistic Regression Test of Effect of Outsider versus Local Interviewers on Knowledge and Self-Presentation.

<p>Dominican Republic Interviewer-Respondent Familiarity Project Data, 2010.</p

Logistic Regression Estimates of Effect of Interviewer Familiarity on Reported Use of Modern Family Planning, by Strata, Dominican Republic Interviewer-Respondent Familiarity Project Data, 2010.

<p>Logistic Regression Estimates of Effect of Interviewer Familiarity on Reported Use of Modern Family Planning, by Strata, Dominican Republic Interviewer-Respondent Familiarity Project Data, 2010.</p

Multinomial logistic regression estimates of effect of Lies and Familiarity on Reported Modern Family Planning Use, Dominican Republic Interviewer-Respondent Familiarity Project Data, 201.

<p>Multinomial logistic regression estimates of effect of Lies and Familiarity on Reported Modern Family Planning Use, Dominican Republic Interviewer-Respondent Familiarity Project Data, 201.</p