American Journal of Epidemiology Vol. 141, No. 12: 1194-1200
Copyright © 1995 by The Johns Hopkins University School of Hygiene and Public Health
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Reliability of Reports of Sexual Behavior: A Study of Married Couples in Rural West Africa
From the Laboratoire d'Anthropologie Biologique, Unitè Mixte de Recherche 152, Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, Muséum National d'Histoire Naturelle Paris, France
Reprint requests to Gilles Pison, Laboratoire d'Anthropologie Biologique, Musée de l'Homme, 17 place du Trocadéro, 75116 Paris, France.
A heterosexual partners survey in rural Senegal, Africa, was carried out in 1992 to evaluate the reliability of self-reported answers about sexual practices. The authors followed 62 married couples weekly during a 5-week period to assess the level of agreement 1) between answers made by members of the same couple but collected separately, 2) between retrospective reporting of sexual activity during the last 4 weeks versus weekly reporting of sexual activity during 4 weeks, and 3) between answers to a set of identical retrospective questions asked 5 weeks apart. Reports over recent and short periods of time such as 7 days are reliable: The dates of sexual acts with spouse reported during the weekly interviews were concordant between members of a couple at 0-day or 1-day intervals in 72% of cases. The concordance of weeks reported with or without intercourse was also high. Reports over longer periods of time are less reliable: The comparison of retrospective reports versus weekly reports regarding mean number of sexual acts during the last 4 weeks shows a clear overreporting that was higher among men (4.5 vs. 2.7 sexual acts) than among women (3.7 vs. 2.7).
epidemiologic methods; sex behavior
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