Centre for Sexual Health and HIV Research, Research Department of Infection and Population Health, University College London, London, WC1E 6JB, UK.
Arch Sex Behav. 2013 Feb;42(2):173-85. doi: 10.1007/s10508-012-9962-2. Epub 2012 Jun 14.
Patterns of sexual partnership formation and dissolution are key drivers of sexually transmitted infection transmission. Sexual behavior survey participants may be unable or unwilling to report accurate details about their sexual partners, limiting the potential to capture information on sexual mixing and timing of partnerships. We examined how questions were interpreted, including recall strategies and judgments made in selecting responses, to inform development of a module on recent sexual partnerships in Britain's third National Survey of Sexual Attitudes and Lifestyles ("Natsal-3"). Face-to-face cognitive interviews were conducted with 14 men and 18 women aged 18-74 years, during development work for Natsal-3. People with multiple recent partners were purposively sampled and questions were presented as a computer-assisted self-interview. Participants were generally agreeable to answering questions about their sexual partners and practices. Interpretation of questions designed to measure concurrent (overlapping) partnerships was broadly consistent with the epidemiological concept of concurrency. Partners' ages, genders, ethnicity, and participants' perceptions of whether partner(s) had had concurrent partnerships were reported without offense. Recall problems and lack of knowledge were reported by some participants (of all ages), especially about former, casual, and/or new partnerships, and some reported guessing partners' ages and dates of sex. Generally, participants were able to answer questions about their sexual partners accurately, even when repeated for multiple partners. Cognitive interviews provided insight into the participants' understanding of, ability to answer, and willingness to answer questions. This enabled us to improve questions used in previous surveys, refine new questions, and ensure the questionnaire order was logical for participants.
性行为模式的形成和破裂是性传播感染传播的关键驱动因素。性行为调查参与者可能无法或不愿意准确报告其性伴侣的详细信息，从而限制了捕捉性行为混合和伴侣关系时间的信息的潜力。我们研究了如何解释问题，包括回忆策略和在选择回答时做出的判断，为英国第三次全国性态度和生活方式调查（“Natsal-3”）中最近性行为伴侣模块的开发提供信息。在 Natsal-3 的开发工作中，对 14 名 18-74 岁的男性和 18 名女性进行了面对面的认知访谈。针对具有多个近期伴侣的人进行了有针对性的抽样，并且以计算机辅助自我访谈的形式提出了问题。参与者通常同意回答有关其性伴侣和性行为的问题。旨在衡量同时（重叠）伴侣关系的问题的解释与并发的流行病学概念基本一致。参与者报告了伴侣的年龄、性别、种族，以及他们对伴侣是否存在同时发生的性关系的看法，而没有冒犯。一些参与者（包括所有年龄段）报告了回忆问题和缺乏知识，尤其是关于前任、随意和/或新的伴侣关系，一些参与者报告说猜测伴侣的年龄和发生性关系的日期。通常，即使针对多个伴侣重复提问，参与者也能够准确回答有关其性伴侣的问题。认知访谈深入了解了参与者对问题的理解、回答问题的能力和回答问题的意愿。这使我们能够改进以前调查中使用的问题，完善新问题，并确保问卷的顺序对参与者来说是合理的。
