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In 1965, Warner developed an interviewing procedure designed to eliminate evasive answer bias when questions of a sensitive nature are asked. He called the procedure "randomized response." The authors have been studying the technique for several years and, in this paper, are re- porting some of the estimates of induced abortion in urban North Carolina using randomized response. Estimates of the proportion of women having an abortion during the past year among women 18-44 years of age are reported. For the study population indices were developed relating induced abortion to total conceptions for whites and nonwhites. The illegal abortion rate per 100 conceptions was estimated to be 14.9 for whites and 32.9 for nonwhites. Estimates of the proportion of women having an abortion during their lifetime among women 18 years old or over are also shown, Among ever married women, the proportion having an abortion during their lifetime declined as education increased. Estimates were high for women with 5 or more pregnancies. Most of the respondents stated that they were satisfied that the randomized response approach would not reveal their personal situation. Furthermore, they did not think their friends would truthfully respond to a direct question regarding abortion. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This research paper undertakes to examine some of the traditional concerns in using the telephone interview in social research. The purpose is not to lay these concerns to final rest, but to encourage systematic exploration of the limitations and advantages of the telephone interview as a data collection tool. As the number of telephones increases it might be expected that telephone interviews would assume a greater role as an approach to data collection. Methodological limitations inherent within present telephone technology are evident. If one is, for example, interested in the questional context of facial expressions, hand movements, smiles or frowns, or similar characteristics, then the telephone interview is clearly not an appropriate method. It is probably within the context of what is commonly called "survey research" that the use of the telephone holds promise of becoming an important research tool. The discussion of the various methodological issues that follows, stresses the importance of defining the research problem in determining the appropriateness of the telephone interview.

This article presents abstracts of various papers published in the June 1974 issue of the journal "Quality and Quantity." In one of the papers, the writer has intended to prove the thesis of strict homology between magnitude and value, significance structure of a magnitude and axiological structure of a value and, consequently, between scientific law and evaluational standard and between explanation and valuation. In another paper causality is conceived in its intuitive meaning, that is, in the meaning referring to the manipulatability of the arguments of causal relation. Another paper examines advantages and limitations of telephone surveys in social research in terms of sample bias, interview type, response rate and validity. A comparison with personal interviews and mailed questionnaires suggests that in certain circumstances the telephone interview may serve as an appropriate method for obtaining social science research data, and that in terms of cost and speed in data collection, the telephone interview has proven to be superior to other methods.

A comparison is made of demographic data gathered using an experimental short interview form with that from the more traditional in-depth fertility and contraceptive KAP interview. The short form is weakest in measuring current fertility, somewhat more adequate in measuring cumulative fertility, and about equally as effective as the depth interview in measuring infant/child mortality. Most of the deficiency in the quality of the short-interview data can be attributed to accepting information from other household members or neighbors when the woman herself was not available. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Data for both rural and urban women in Thailand indicate that the large majority of respondents are able to provide numerical responses to questions on desired family size. Although there is evidence that some women tend to rationalize the number of children they have when stating the number they would want if they were recently married, the vast majority of respondents prefer a number which is different from the number of living children they had at the time of the interview. Women who had already reached or exceeded their desired number were almost universal in stating they wanted no additional children, whereas only a minority of women who had yet to reach their desired family size said they wanted no more children. Finally, the proportion of women who practiced family planning is substantially greater among women who had already achieved or exceeded their desired family size than among women who had fewer than their desired number. The results thus suggest that, in Thailand at least, responses to family size preferences need to be interpreted with caution but nevertheless can be of use to the population analyst. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article discusses the family size utility function (FSUF), which portrays the relative strengths of preferences among family sizes, as held by an individual, couple, or group. Derivable from the FSUF are indications of motivation to seek or avoid additional children, indications which may prove useful for understanding fertility decisions and for predicting completed fertility. A method is described for assessing the FSUF with data obtainable by interview surveys, and case studies of actual FSUF's are presented. The article concludes with theoretical and empirical questions for further investigation of the FSUF. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses the strategies useful in obtaining truthful responses without jeopardizing the respondent or researcher during the interviews. The first strategy is randomized response technique. In applying one variation of the randomized response technique, the researcher presents each respondent with a card on which two queries are printed. Out of these two questions, one question is of principal interest to the researcher and must be answerable in terms of "yes" or "no." The second question must not be related to the first question. The net result is an identification and response to a question that is not definitely known by the researcher. In order to obtain controversial information, the researcher might choose to use a more mechanical or logistical strategy. Using this strategy, a set of data containing old and new information, merged by the respondent can be obtained, the total data being supplied anonymously. Sometimes, if not used intelligently, this technique can be corrupted.