Design and implementation of an online weekly survey to study unintended pregnancies: preliminary results

Jennifer S. Barber, University of Michigan
Yasamin Kusunoki, University of Michigan
Heather H. Gatny, University of Michigan

This paper describes a new and innovative approach to measuring relationships, contraception, and unintended pregnancy among young women. The ongoing project begins with a 60-minute in-person interview about family background and current relationship characteristics. At the conclusion of the interview, respondents are enrolled in an ongoing journal, which consists of a 5-minute survey via web or phone, and occurs weekly for 2.5 years. We have enrolled over 1000 young women in the study and have experienced excellent baseline response rates and high journal participation rates. The current paper describes the study and its design strengths and weaknesses. The results presented throughout the paper are preliminary as data collection ends January 2012.