title: Reporting on first sexual experience: The importance of interviewer-respondent interaction.
abstract: Survey methodologists typically seek to improve data on sensitive topics by standardizing surveys and avoiding the use of human interviewers. This study uses data collected from 90 never-married young adults in rural Malawi to compare reports on first sexual encounters between a standard survey and an in-depth interview. A significant fraction of young women who claimed in the survey to have never been sexually active affirmed sexual experience during the in-depth interview, fielded shortly thereafter. Two elements of the in-depth interview, flexibility and reciprocal exchange, foster trust and more truthful reporting. The findings contradict the long-standing presumption that face-to-face interviews are inherently threatening when the topic is sex.
authors.affiliation: Population Studies & Training Center, Brown University, 68 Waterman Street, Providence, RI, 02912 USA.
authors.forename: Michelle
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Poulin