Record Details

Social and Psychological Factors Affecting Fertility, 1941

Harvard Dataverse (Africa Rice Center, Bioversity International, CCAFS, CIAT, IFPRI, IRRI and WorldFish)

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Field Value
 
Title Social and Psychological Factors Affecting Fertility, 1941
 
Identifier https://doi.org/10.7910/DVN/ZNAYGN
 
Creator Ridley, Jeanne Clare
 
Publisher Harvard Dataverse
 
Description This study investigated motivations behind fertility patterns to ascertain the extent to which the number of children couples had deviated from the ideal, and to discover how socioeconomic and psychological factors influenced decisions about the number of children desired. The data were collected in 1941, under the sponsorship of the Council of Social Agencies.


The sample consists of White couples from Indianapolis who were neither Catholic nor Jewish, had been residents of a large city most of the time since marriage, and had been married in the years 1927-1929. The wife was under 30 and the husband under 40 at the time of marriage, and both had finished the eighth grade. Of the 2,089 couples meeting the requirements for inclusion in the study, 1,648 were interviewed. Eight hundred and sixty fertile couples gave detailed information on
all instruments during three interview sessions. These data were weighted, as the percentage distribution by parity (number of children born) of these 860 couples differed markedly from that comprising the universe of eligible couples.


Data were acquired by trained interviewers during three meetings with couples. The first interview contained questions designed to enlist the wife's interest and cooperation and to secure simple demographic information. Another instrument (separate for both husbands and wives) examined attitudes about costs and values of having children, religion, marriage, and other interests. The second interview elicited information about family, employment, and education. The final interview with wives dealt primarily with contraception and history of pregnancy. Interviewers completed rating scales of their impressions of the couples on various dimensions.


The Murray Research Archive holds numeric file data for 860 fertile couples, an instruction booklet for interviewers, and partial original record paper data for 694 participants, some of whom were fecund and some of whom were sterile. No data inventory of instruments or subject codes. These data were found, and are a partial set of the completed instruments. There is no way of knowing how much additional material is missing.
 
Subject Social Sciences
 
Type field study