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Updated: Jun 14, 2026

Assessment of Social Interaction Behaviors
Published on: February 25, 2011
Reporting on first sexual experience: The importance of interviewer-respondent interaction
1Population Studies & Training Center, Brown University, 68 Waterman Street, Providence, RI, 02912 USA.
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Survey methodologists typically seek to improve data on sensitive topics by standardizing surveys and avoiding the use of human interviewers. This study uses data collected from 90 never-married young adults in rural Malawi to compare reports on first sexual encounters between a standard survey and an in-depth interview. A significant fraction of young women who claimed in the survey to have never been sexually active affirmed sexual experience during the in-depth interview, fielded shortly thereafter. Two elements of the in-depth interview, flexibility and reciprocal exchange, foster trust and more truthful reporting. The findings contradict the long-standing presumption that face-to-face interviews are inherently threatening when the topic is sex.
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