Family Choices

Follow-up Survey

Additional Study Web site: https://online.survey.psu.edu/FamilyChoicesStudy/

You may recall completing a telephone survey about child-bearing and family-building decisions about three years ago with an interviewer from the Bureau of Sociological Research or Penn State's Survey Research Center. We would like to take a moment to thank you for your time and contributions to this important national, longitudinal study. We are now starting to call back many of the women who we originally interviewed to learn about changes in their lives and family choices.

If you recently received a letter from us asking for your help once again for the Family Choices Study, we encourage you to complete the follow-up survey with one of our interviewers. If you did not receive the letter or would like another copy, please click here for a PDF version. The survey will take about 35 minutes to complete and will provide important insight about women's life choices across time. Your opinions and experiences are again invaluable to the researchers as they look at the medical problems or social circumstances that may interfere with a woman's desire to have or not have children.

To answer some of the questions you may have about this study before you decide to participate in the current survey, we have prepared some Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ's) and provided answers below. Please feel free to call us at 1-800-480-4549 if you have any questions or concerns whatsoever. Your comments are extremely important to us. Click on the following links to view preliminary study results (in PDF format) fromJuly/August 2005 and August/September 2007. 


Who will be calling me?
Professional telephone interviewers from the Bureau of Sociological Research (BOSR) at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln will be conducting the survey. (Last time the Survey Research Center at Penn State also conducted interviews, so some respondents may remember completing the survey with an interviewer from that shop, receiving mailings from them, or contacting them with updated contact information.) All information will be kept strictly confidential and in no way will your name or contact information be connected to your responses. The director of the BOSR is Dr. Julia McQuillan. The assistant director is Stacia Jorgensen, and the Family Choices project manager is Ashley Frear Cooper. You can reach them by calling the BOSR toll-free line at 1-800-480-4549 from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. Central time Monday through Friday.


Who is sponsoring this study?
This study (original and follow-up surveys) is funded by a grant from the National Institute of Health's National Institute of Child Health and Human Development.


Who are the researchers and how may I contact them?
Julia McQuillan, PhD
University of Nebraska-Lincoln
402-472-6616 (office)
jmcquillan2@unl.edu

David R. Johnson, PhD
Pennsylvania State University
814-865-9564 (office)
drj10@psu.edu


What are my rights as a research participant?
If you have any questions about your rights as a research participant, please call the University of Nebraska-Lincoln's Institutional Review Board at 402-472-6965. Our study is approved under IRB # 2008018661EP.


What about confidentiality?
This survey is completely confidential. Your telephone number and name will be separated from your responses. All responses will be grouped with those of other participants in the survey; and no one will be able to identify you or your responses. Your name and telephone number will only be used to contact you for study-related reasons; your information will not be sold or used for other projects nor will the researchers for this project have access to your contact information. We could not operate as a survey research organization if we didn't keep to our promise of confidentiality. You can verify the project with one of our supervisors or project staff by calling 1-800-480-4549.


I'm too busy. I don't have time.
We realize that it may be hard to make time for this interview, but one of the most important groups we need to talk to is very busy women. Some busy women choose childlessness, others postpone childbearing until they have more time, and others struggle to raise children. We especially need to understand how women with hectic schedules go about planning their childbearing and what the impacts are for their lives. 

We don't have to complete the survey all at once. We can do the survey in small segments of 5 or 10 minutes each if you prefer. We can -- and want to -- schedule a callback whenever it is most convenient for you.


Why are you doing this study? What will I get out of this?
National policy is concerned about who will be the next generation of mothers and helping women have the children they want. We seek to understand how many women are unable to have the children they want and how many women decide not to have any children and how those decisions may change over time. Studies from this project will help us understand the factors that make it difficult for women to meet their childbearing ideals and the consequences of their successes and failures on their lives. Whether you have no children, one, two, three or more, we think you will find the questions are about issues that you have thought about seriously and that are very important to you. We think you will enjoy doing the interview and having a chance to talk about issues dear to your heart.


I'm not interested! 
We really appreciate the time you gave us last time. Your participation in this survey is extremely important to learn how women's opinions and experiences with childbearing and family-building change over time. You represent thousands of other women, and in order to give the researchers an accurate picture of the long-range dilemmas women face in having the number of children they want, we need to talk to the women we talked to before.