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Contraceptive Method Choice Among Youth in the United States: The Importance of Relationship Context

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Demography

Abstract

We examine the relationship characteristics associated with contraceptive method choice within young people’s nonmarital sexual relationships, using data from retrospective relationship histories available in the third wave (2001–2002) of the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health. Data-reduction techniques produce a detailed multidimensional characterization of relationship commitment for nonmarital sexual relationships. We then use multilevel analysis to estimate associations between two key relationship characteristics—relationship commitment and couple heterogamy—and the type of contraceptive method used at last sexual intercourse within each relationship. Results indicate that for a given individual, contraceptive method choice varies across relationships as a function of these characteristics, even after we account for important individual and family characteristics and prior relationship experiences.

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Notes

  1. We recognize the potential recall bias for relationships that occurred further in the past. We replicated the final model for relationships that were ongoing in the past three years and found comparable results.

  2. This part of the study design was motivated by the different research interests of the Add Health investigators, which resulted in different versions of the questionnaire being administered according to relationship type (sexual, important, or couple). Refer to the Add Health website for details (http://www.cpc.unc.edu/projects/addhealth/files/w3cdbk/sect19.zip).

  3. Only 1.5% of relationships did not have valid contraception information (i.e., the information was missing).

  4. In addition, we performed latent class analysis, which provides fit statistics, in order to compare results to those from the cluster analysis. The latent class analysis indicated a three-cluster solution as having the best fit. In general, this three-class solution is a collapsed version of the five-category cluster solution. We chose the five-category cluster solution because it reveals important variations in contraceptive method choice that are masked by the three-class solution.

  5. aML does not have survey estimation procedures comparable to those within Stata. Therefore, the school-based (and thus clustered) design of Add Health is handled by treating the school as an additional level and including the Add Health’s post-stratification variable (region of the United States) at the school level.

  6. We also ran separate models that included gender by relationship commitment and couple heterogamy; we discuss only significant gender differences in the text.

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Acknowledgments

The research on which this article is based was supported by a pre-doctoral fellowship to Yasamin Kusunoki from the California Center for Population Research Training Program while she was a graduate student at the University of California, Los Angeles, which was supported by a grant from NICHD (T32 HD007545) and by two research grants to Dawn M. Upchurch funded by NICHD (R01 HD36993 and R01 HD41886). An NICHD Postdoctoral Fellowship (T32 HD007339) at the Population Studies Center at the University of Michigan provided additional support to Yasamin Kusunoki. The authors thank Jennifer Barber, N.E. Barr, Sarah Burgard, David Harding, and three anonymous reviewers for their helpful comments. An earlier version of this article was presented at the annual meeting of the Population Association of America in Philadelphia, March 31–April 2, 2005. This research uses data from Add Health, a program project designed by J. Richard Udry, Peter S. Bearman, and Kathleen Mullan Harris, and funded by a grant (P01-HD31921) from the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, with cooperative funding from 17 other agencies. Special acknowledgment is due to Ronald R. Rindfuss and Barbara Entwisle for assistance in the original design. Persons interested in obtaining data files from Add Health should contact Add Health, Carolina Population Center, 123W. Franklin Street, Chapel Hill, NC 27516–2524 (addhealth@unc.edu). No direct support was received from Grant P01-HD31921 for this analysis.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Population Studies Center and Survey Research Center, Institute for Social Research, University of Michigan, 426 Thompson St., Room 2214, Ann Arbor, MI, 48106-1248, USA

    Yasamin Kusunoki

  2. School of Public Health, University of California, Los Angeles, 650 Charles E. Young Drive South, Los Angeles, CA, 90095-1772, USA

    Dawn M. Upchurch

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  1. Yasamin Kusunoki
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Kusunoki, Y., Upchurch, D.M. Contraceptive Method Choice Among Youth in the United States: The Importance of Relationship Context. Demography 48, 1451–1472 (2011). https://doi.org/10.1007/s13524-011-0061-0

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