Heidi Moseson|Moses Massaquoi|Christine Dehlendorf|Luke Bawo|Bernice Dahn|Yah Zolia|Eric Vittinghoff|Robert A. Hiatt|Caitlin Gerdts
Reducing under-reporting of stigmatized health events using the List Experiment: results from a randomized, population-based study of abortion in Liberia
University of California, San Francisco|University of California, San Francisco|Ministry of Health and Social Welfare|Ministry of Health and Social Welfare|Ministry of Health and Social Welfare|University of California, San Francisco|University of California, San Francisco|Ibis Reproductive Health
background direct measurement sensitive health events often limited high levels underreporting due stigma concerns privacyabortion particular notoriously difficult measurethis study implements novel method estimate cumulative lifetime incidence induced abortion liberiamethods randomly selected sample 3219 women ages 1549 years june 2013 liberia implemented double list experimentto measure abortion incidence woman read two lists list nonsensitive items b list correlated nonsensitive items abortion addedthe sensitive item abortion randomly added either list list b respondentthe respondent reported simple count options list experienced without indicating optionsdifference means calculations average counts list averaged provide estimate population proportion abortionresults list experiment estimates 32 95 confidence interval ci 029034 respondents surveyed ever abortion 26 women urban areas 36 women rural areas pvalue difference 0001 95 response rateconclusions list experiment generated estimate five times greater previous representative estimate abortion liberia indicating potential utility method reduce underreporting measurement abortionthe method