Original articleWhat Are the Consequences of Relying upon Self-Reports of Sexually Transmitted Diseases? Lessons Learned about Recanting in a Longitudinal Study
Section snippets
STD incidence and prevalence among youth
The incidence of STDs among youth is a critical public health concern in the United States. Youth are dramatically disproportionately contributing to new cases of STDs. Youth aged 15–24 years contribute to half of new STD infections each year despite constituting only one-quarter of the sexually experienced population aged 15–44 years [15]. With respect to specific STDs, youths' contribution is even higher: nearly 75% of chlamydia cases and 60% of gonorrhea cases [16]. In 2005, the percent of
Data collection
Data used in this study were obtained in three waves as part of the NSAM. The first wave of data was collected from a nationally representative sample of non-institutionalized, unmarried men ages 15–19 years in 1988 (wave 1). These men were followed up at ages 17–22 in 1990–1991 (wave 2) and at ages 21–26 in 1995 (wave 3). African-American and Hispanic men were oversampled in the original sample, and sampling weights were created to adjust for the oversampling to make results characterize the
Results for the total eligible sample
Of the total sample of 1263 respondents with two-or-more data points, 99 (7.1 %, weighted) rescinded their self-reports of STD history across time (Table 1, column 5; Figure 2, center circle). This total sample includes men who participated in wave 1 and 2 only (13 rescinded their STD status), waves 1 and 3 only (two rescinded), and waves 1, 2, and 3 (84 rescinded). Hereafter we will characterize the three waves as middle adolescence, late adolescence, and early adulthood, respectively.
Recanting from middle to late adolescence
Summary of results
Of the at-risk, sexually experienced sample contributing data for three time points, 7% rescind reports of whether a doctor ever told him he had an STD. From the first to the third wave there was nearly 30% attrition; men who engage in more risk behaviors were more likely to attrit [24]. Hence, these findings may underestimate the gravity of reporting errors. Furthermore, recanting patterns reveal that retracting reports of STD history does not occur at a steady rate over time. We observed that
Acknowledgments
This research was supported by the National Institutes of Health–NICHD: (National Institute of Child Health and Human Development) R01 HD036948. Part of the work reported here was also supported by the Cooperative State Research, Education and Extension Service, U.S. Department of Agriculture, under Project No. ILLU-45-0366 (to J.H.P). We thank Janet Rosenbaum for her insightful comments and suggestions on this manuscript.
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