Family Choices

The Family Choices Study is a national, longitudinal telephone survey of women that is designed to help us understand how decisions to remain childless or to have children affect women's lives. This survey aims to determine how women make these decisions and how these decisions affect and are affected by their work, relationships, and well-being. The researchers are particularly interested in what happens when women who want children have medical problems or social circumstances that interfere with their childbearing expectations. By interviewing a sample of women over time about their family situations, childbearing decisions, and general feelings about their specific situations, we will come to better understand how social and medical factors impact child-bearing and child-rearing over the life course.

About 3,450 respondents from the wave 1, or baseline, data-collection effort are currently (June 2008 to December 2009) being called back and asked to complete a follow-up telephone survey. Prior to our telephone call, respondents with a valid mailing address on record were mailed a pre-notification letter including a $1 cash incentive. Respondents are being asked questions similar or identical to questions asked in the wave 1 survey; the wave 2 focal survey takes about 30 to 45 minutes to complete. Partners of focal respondents (who completed the wave 2 survey and consented to us calling her partner) will be called and asked to complete the wave 2 partner survey (similar to the wave 1 partner survey); the wave 2 partner survey takes about 20 to 30 minutes to complete.

Research (in the form of publications, conference presentations, etc.) from this project will help us understand the factors that make it difficult for women to meet their childbearing ideals and the consequences their decisions and situations have on their lives. The data from wave 1 are publicly available at http://sodapop.pop.psu.edu/data-collections/nsfb.

To view recent news and publications from the Family Choices Study, click here.