Abortion Underreporting in Add Health: Findings and Implications

Katherine I. Tierney ()
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Katherine I. Tierney: University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

Population Research and Policy Review, 2019, vol. 38, issue 3, No 6, 417-428

Abstract: Abstract Well-documented, large-scale abortion underreporting on U.S. surveys raises questions about the use of abortion self-reports for statistical inference. This paper is the first to evaluate the completeness of the abortion data in the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent to Adult Health (Add Health). Comparisons of Add Health’s estimated abortion rates to external sources show that the Add Health data capture 35% of expected abortions. Thus, Add Health performed no better than other surveys in collecting abortion data. Further, no differences in underreporting by race/ethnicity or age at abortion were found. We suggest that the current U.S. social environment generates high levels of abortion stigma, which yields abortion underreporting. We conclude that due to underreporting, survey self-reports of abortion need to be evaluated, contextualized, and used with caution.

Keywords: Abortion; Measurement; Add Health; Data quality (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2019
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (5)

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DOI: 10.1007/s11113-019-09511-8

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