Effects of Interviewer-Respondent Familiarity on Contraceptive Use and Abortion Data

Problems with reproductive health data in non-Western settings are widely noted and have been the focus of innovative methodological work. Collection of improved data on contraceptive use and abortion generally involves methods for distancing the interviewer from the respondent through forms of self-administered questionnaires (ACASI, etc.). We discuss an alternative approach which breaks from the “stranger interviewer norm." We present data from a unique experimental design recently fielded in the Dominican Republic levels of familiarity linking interviewers and respondents are randomly varied and test how this variation alters responses. Initial evidence suggests that contraceptive use estimates obtained by more traditional, stranger interviewers in our sample resemble estimates obtained by the DHS. Estimates obtained by local interviewers however are far lower. Our findings suggest that levels of familiarity strongly affect how contraceptive use data are reported by respondents. Further analysis is focused on indirect methods to validate the widely varying reports.