Reliable information about risky sexual behavior among teenagers and young adults can be collected now by an affordable, user-friendly device. This device has been developed by Brown University sociologists, and it allows the respondents to communicate nonverbally and confidentially during face-to-face interviews.
Their new nonverbal response card is an 8.5-by-11 inch laminated sheet of paper with a respondent side and an interviewer side.
Each side is divided into 35 cells with a small hole punched through the center of each cell. On the respondent side of the card, the cells contain written and color-coded responses.
The numeric responses, for questions such as the number of sexual partners or age at first sex, range from 0-25, marked with both a written number and vertical bars for tallying.
The non-numeric responses (yes, no, and does not apply) are written in local languages and also color-coded with green, red, and blue. On the interviewer side of the card, each cell contains a unique survey-specific three-digit number.
Respondents answer questions by poking a stick through the punched hole of the answer they wish to give. The interviewer records the code.
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The researchers found that respondents were twice as likely to report having premarital sex when using a nonverbal response card.
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The researchers found that young people over-report knowledge of condoms when they give verbal responses: About half of the single respondents giving verbal responses reported knowing where to obtain a condom, compared to only 37 percent of the single respondents in the card group.
The findings were published in the Studies in Family Planning.
Source-ANI