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Abstract：
Desired fertility measures are routinely collected and used by researchers and policy makers, but their self-reported nature raises the possibility of reporting bias. In this paper, we test for the presence of such bias by comparing responses to direct survey questions with indirect questions offering a varying, randomized, degree of confidentiality to respondents in a socioeconomically diverse sample of Nigerian women ([Formula: see text]). We find that women report higher fertility preferences when asked indirectly, but only when their responses afford them complete confidentiality, not when their responses are simply blind to the enumerator. Our results suggest that there may be fewer unintended pregnancies than currently thought and that the effectiveness of family planning policy targeting may be weakened by the bias we uncover. We conclude with suggestions for future work on how to mitigate reporting bias.
摘要：
研究人员和决策者经常收集和使用所需的生育率指标，但是他们自我报告的性质增加了报告偏见的可能性。在本文中,我们通过比较对直接调查问题和间接问题的回答来测试这种偏见的存在，随机化，在尼日利亚妇女的社会经济多样化样本中，对受访者的保密程度([公式：见正文])。我们发现，当被间接询问时，女性报告的生育偏好更高，但只有当他们的回答给他们完全保密时，当他们的反应对枚举器视而不见时，就不会了。我们的结果表明，意外怀孕的可能性可能比目前认为的要少，而且我们发现的偏见可能会削弱计划生育政策的有效性。最后，我们提出了关于如何减轻报告偏见的未来工作的建议。
