Abstract

PIP: The National Survey of Men (NSM-I) was conducted in 1991 to examine issues related to sexual behavior and condom use among noninstitutionalized US men aged 20-39, intended as the baseline survey for a longitudinal study. A total of 20,086 housing units were canvassed, 2434 were excluded, and 16,414 of the remaining 17,652 housing units were successfully screened for eligibility. The main sample of the general population contained 1062 listing areas and an oversample contained 153 listing areas designated as black listing areas. The probability of selection of a listing area in the main survey sample was 1 in 10,511, while the probability in the black oversample was 1 in 1164. The questionnaire consisted of personal particulars; sexual initiation and current exposure; current wife or partner; previous marital relationships; other nonmarital sexual partners; nonsexual partners; health and risk-taking behavior; attitudes, perceptions, and knowledge of health-related and contraception related issues; reasons for using or not using condoms; follow-up information; interviewer observations; and self-administered questions. Data collection and processing was carried out by the Institute for Survey Research at Temple University, Philadelphia. A total of 206 interviewers and 9 regional field coordinators were recruited for the field work; of these, 189 interviewers and 7 coordinators worked on the survey. The response rate of 70% was considered respectable, given the highly sensitive nature of the questions. Standard errors for various estimated percentages were provided separately for the white and the black samples. After the survey was completed, the final sample was weighted to reflect differential sampling rates, as well as to account for multiple households, multiple eligibility, and differential nonresponse. The final weight consisted of sampling weight, screening weight, eligibility weight, nonresponse weight, and poststratification weight. Scaled to the sample size, it produced a self-weighing sample with a mean weight of 1.00 and a standard deviation of 1.16. The minimum and maximum values of the final weight were .07 and 11.40, respectively.