Event history calendars (EHCs) are frequently used in social measurement to capture important information about the time ordering of events in people's lives, and enable inference about the relationships of the events with other outcomes of interest. To date, EHCs have primarily been designed for face-to-face or telephone survey interviewing, and few calendar tools have been developed for more private, self-administered modes of data collection. Web surveys offer benefits in terms of both self-administration, which can reduce social desirability bias, and timeliness. We developed and tested a web application enabling the calendar-based measurement of contraceptive method use histories. These measures provide valuable information for researchers studying family planning and fertility behaviors. This study describes the development of the web application, and presents a comparison of data collected from online panels using the application with data from a benchmark face-to-face survey collecting similar measures (the National Survey of Family Growth).
This study presents results from a randomized experiment in the 2015-2017 National Survey of Family Growth, where a large national sample of U.S. individuals aged 15-49 was randomly assigned to one of two different versions of a survey question about sexual identity (one with three response options, including heterosexual, gay/lesbian, and bisexual, and one adding the option "something else"). Analyses of changes in the associations of sexual identity with alcohol, tobacco, and other drug use across these treatments revealed evidence of significant differences in the associations that remained robust after adjusting for socio-demographics. The results suggest that when individuals choose their sexual identity from a more limited number of response options, the heterogeneity of the sexual identity subgroups increases, weakening estimated associations of sexual identity with these behaviors. Open-ended questions may therefore be necessary to measure sexual identity and estimate its associations with substance use behaviors accurately in surveys.
Natural experiments are often used for answering research questions in which randomization is implausible. Effective recruitment strategies are well documented for observational cohort studies and clinical trials, unlike recruitment methods for time-sensitive natural experiments. In this time-sensitive study of the impact of a minimum wage policy, we aimed to recruit 900 low-wage workers in Minneapolis, Minnesota and Raleigh, North Carolina. We present our recruitment strategies, challenges, and successes for participant screening and enrollment of a difficult-to-reach population.