Department of Sociology, Bowling Green State University, Bowling Green, OH 43403, USA.
Demography. 2012 Feb;49(1):101-24. doi: 10.1007/s13524-011-0073-9.
Researchers continue to question fathers' willingness to report their biological children in surveys and the ability of surveys to adequately represent fathers. To address these concerns, this study evaluates the quality of men's fertility data in the 1979 and 1997 cohorts of the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth (NLSY79 and NLSY97) and in the 2002 National Survey of Family Growth (NSFG). Comparing fertility rates in each survey with population rates based on data from Vital Statistics and the U.S. Census Bureau, we document how the incomplete reporting of births in different surveys varies according to men's characteristics, including their age, race, marital status, and birth cohort. In addition, we use Monte Carlo simulations based on the NSFG data to demonstrate how birth underreporting biases associations between early parenthood and its antecedents. We find that in the NSFG, roughly four out of five early births were reported; but in the NLSY79 and NLSY97, almost nine-tenths of early births were reported. In all three surveys, incomplete reporting was especially pronounced for nonmarital births. Our results suggest that the quality of male fertility data is strongly linked to survey design and that it has implications for models of early male fertility.
研究人员一直在质疑父亲在调查中报告其亲生子女的意愿，以及调查是否有能力充分代表父亲。为了解决这些问题，本研究评估了 1979 年和 1997 年全国青年纵向调查（NLSY79 和 NLSY97）以及 2002 年全国家庭增长调查（NSFG）中男性生育数据的质量。通过将每个调查中的生育率与基于人口统计数据和美国人口普查局数据的人口出生率进行比较，我们记录了不同调查中出生漏报的情况如何根据男性的特征（包括年龄、种族、婚姻状况和出生队列）而有所不同。此外，我们还使用基于 NSFG 数据的蒙特卡罗模拟来演示早期亲职与前期因素之间的关联如何因生育漏报而产生偏差。我们发现，在 NSFG 中，大约五分之四的早期生育得到了报告；但在 NLSY79 和 NLSY97 中，几乎有十分之九的早期生育得到了报告。在这三个调查中，非婚生子女的漏报情况尤其明显。我们的研究结果表明，男性生育数据的质量与调查设计密切相关，这对早期男性生育模式具有重要意义。
