DOI: 10.3886/e164142
title: 2009 National Survey of Reproductive and Contraceptive Knowledge

description: This survey was the first of its kind to focus in depth on the attitudes and behavior of unmarried young adults regarding pregnancy planning, contraception, and related issues. Commissioned by The National Campaign to Prevent Teen and Unplanned Pregnancy and conducted by the Guttmacher Institute, the survey gathered detailed results from a nationally representative probability sample of 1,800 unmarried men and women aged 18–29. The survey collected information on unmarried young adults’ sources of information about birth control, knowledge, attitudes and behaviors regarding pregnancy risk and contraceptive methods, experience with sex education, relationships and pregnancy experiences, and demographic characteristics.
description: All analyses should be weighted. The main weight variable is f_wgt. (An alternative weight variable, post_wgt, weights the sample up to the population of unmarried women and men 18– 29, approximately 37.6 million people). To obtain accurate standard errors, analyses should also account for the fact that the sample was stratified by using the stratum variable.
description: Response Rates: In total, 1,800 respondents completed interviews—897 females and 903 males. The level of response or cooperation obtained from respondents of a telephone survey can be expressed in different ways. We calculated a response rate of 21% using the American Association for Public Opinion Research’s Response Rate 3 method, in which the denominator includes an estimate of the proportion of cases of unknown eligibility that are likely to be eligible. The cooperation rate is a better reflection of potential respondents’ willingness to participate in the survey. Cooperation rates can be calculated at the household or the respondent level and include only households or respondents who are contacted and fully screened. The overall household cooperation rate for this survey was about 40%; the respondent-level cooperation rate (for the landline sample) was about 75%.
description: Presence of Common Scales: Several Likert-type scales were used.
description: A nationally representative stratified random sample of both cell phone and landline telephone numbers was used to identify eligible respondents. For the landline sample, two mutually exclusive strata were created: The targeted stratum comprised households with listed telephone numbers and a higher-than-average probability of having an eligible unmarried 18–29-year-old (as determined on the basis of known and inferred demographic data from commercial databases), and a complementary stratum consisted of the remaining households that could be reached via random-digit dialing. The landline sample also included substrata in which black and Hispanic households were oversampled. Because the cell phone sample could not be targeted by age or other social and demographic characteristics, it consisted of a single stratum. More than 115,000 telephone numbers were sampled and dialed; of these, nearly 50,000 were found to be non-household numbers. We screened 66,000 households, identified about 4,800 with a likely eligible resident and confirmed eligibility for 3,400.<br>
description: Unmarried women and men aged 18-29 living in the United States. Smallest Geographic Unit: N/A
description: telephone interview;