Jennifer Barber, Univ. of Michigan
Title: The Social Context of Influence, Coercion, and Control: Intimate Relationships and Reproductive Behaviors Abstract: This talk presents results from four separate papers, which illustrate the importance of intimate relationships as the immediate context of whether young women get what they want in terms of their reproductive behaviors. The analyses are based on the Relationship Dynamics and Social Life (RDSL) study, conducted by Jennifer Barber, Yasamin Kusunoki, and Heather Gatny. RDSL surveyed 1,003 18- and 19-year-old women in a Michigan county, and followed them with weekly 5-minute online survey interviews for 2.5 years (130 weeks). They reported 2,704 unique partners, and the weekly interviews assessed the qualities of those relationships, sexual intercourse with those partners, their joint contraceptive use, and experiences with pregnancy. In addition, the RDSL team conducted semi-structured interviews with a subset of women who became pregnant during the study (N = 45), and a propensity-score-matched sample who avoided pregnancy (n = 32).