a Analysis Division , World Fertility Survey/International Statistical Institute , London , U.K.
Popul Stud (Camb). 1981 Jul;35(2):307-20. doi: 10.1080/00324728.1981.10404969.
Abstract In the birth history section of the Core Questionnaire adopted by the countries participating in the World Fertility Survey a question on the date of birth of each child born to the respondent is asked. When the woman cannot provide a date, as is often the case in many developing countries, she is asked how many 'years ago' the birth occurred. If the default is used, the month and year of the birth is imputed by a computer program: However, there can be two plausible interpretations of the 'years ago' response: as completed years, the demographer's usual definition of age, or as rounded years. In this paper, data from the WFS Survey in Bangladesh are used to determine the sensitivity of recent fertility estimates to the interpretation of 'years ago'. It is found that if the woman meant rounded years, but completed years were assumed for imputation, the resulting evidence of a recent decline could be either exaggerated or false. The results have implications for other surveys in which the 'years ago' response is not an explicit option.
摘要 在参与世界生育调查的国家所采用的核心问卷的出生历史部分，会询问受访者每个孩子的出生日期。当女性无法提供日期时（这种情况在许多发展中国家经常发生），会询问生育发生在“多少年以前”。如果使用默认值，则会通过计算机程序推断出出生的月份和年份：但是，对于“多少年以前”的回答可能有两种合理的解释：作为已完成的年数，这是人口学家通常定义年龄的方式，或者作为四舍五入的年数。在本文中，使用来自孟加拉国世界生育调查的数据来确定对“多少年以前”的解释的近期生育率估计的敏感性。研究发现，如果女性的意思是四舍五入的年数，但假设为已完成的年数进行推断，则可能夸大或错误地显示近期下降的证据。这些结果对其他调查具有启示意义，因为在这些调查中，“多少年以前”的回答不是一个明确的选择。
