Consistency of Retrospectively Reported Individual Fertility Data Across Time
Summary
Retrospective fertility measures (such as union status at conception, substance use during pregnancy, or birth weight) are commonly used in survey research on the precursors and consequences of birth characteristics. However, the quality of this data may be problematic, given evidence that individuals often misreport information about past events. The proposed research uses two datasets that repeatedly collect information on the same birth to assess consistency of retrospectively-reported birth data within individuals over time.