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FReDA-W2b - Questions on the topics of women's fertility, affective touching behavior, sexual orientation, and transnational families (English Version)

Question Text:

In your opinion, what is the probability that a woman aged 40 to 45 will become pregnant through fertility treatments?

Instruction:

Please give a percentage value from 0-100.

Answer Categories:

Version 1
0 percent
1 to 19 percent
20 to 39 percent
40 to 59 percent
60 to 79 percent
80 to 100 percent


Version 2
0 to 9 percent
10 to 29 percent
30 to 49 percent
50 to 69 percent
70 to 89 percent
90 to 100 percent


Version 3
open answer
Experimental variation and cognitive follow-up questions:
As part of the cognitive pretest, in addition to the question version developed by FReDA (version 1), two other variations were tested that differed in the design of the response categories (version 2) or contained no response categories (version 3).

The draft question developed by the principals (version 1) used closed response categories and contained a "0 percent" response category and five additional ascending categories in increments of 20 or 21. Responses that were correct according to the client were either at the low end of a response category (Question 1: approximately 80 percent, category: "80 to 100 percent"; Question 2: approximately 40 percent, category: "40 to 59 percent") or at the high end of a response category (Question 3: approximately 15 percent, category: "1 to 19 percent").

Question version 2 used an alternative closed-response format that did not include a "0 percent" category and in which the correct answer was in the middle of an indicated probability range in each case (Question 1: "70 to 89 percent"; Question 2: "30 to 49 percent"; Question 3: "10 to 19 percent").

Findings:
Detailed results on the experimental variation of the response format are presented on pages 12 to 21 in the results report (see downloads).

In summary, respondents generally overestimated the likelihood that a woman aged 40 to 45 would become pregnant after infertility treatments. In addition, it appeared that respondents were strongly oriented toward the answer categories, presumably because they did not know the correct answer. In version 1 with the few response categories, respondents tended to choose the middle categories. Version 2 with the higher number of response categories resulted in a multimodal distribution, and Version 3 had respondents overestimating the probability the most. In addition, respondents differed in whether they thought the probability of a woman aged 40 to 45 becoming pregnant was higher in the general formulation of question 2 or after fertility treatments (question 3). This difference in response behavior could indicate that the knowledge question is too difficult to answer, or that the question has other cognitive hurdles. For example, in question 3, some respondents might refer to the population of all women aged 40 to 45, while others might refer only to those who did not become pregnant naturally.

Recommendations:

The results of the cognitive pretest show that the subject matter of the questions is complex and not all respondents have the appropriate knowledge to answer the questions. Nevertheless, respondents were able to select (versions 1 and 2) or fill in (version 3) an answer and justify it in a meaningful way. The questions can therefore be left in their current form.