Forgotten marriages? Measuring the reliability of marriage histories

Abstract

BACKGROUND Marriage histories are a valuable data source for investigating nuptiality. While researchers typically acknowledge the problems associated with their use, it is unknown to what extent these problems occur and how marriage analyses are affected. OBJECTIVE This paper seeks to investigate the quality of marriage histories by measuring levels of misreporting, examining the characteristics associated with misreporting, and assessing whether misreporting biases marriage indicators. METHODS Using data from the Malawi Longitudinal Study of Families and Health (MLSFH), I compare marriage histories reported by the same respondents at two different points in time. I investigate whether respondents consistently report their spouses (by name), status of marriage, and dates of marriage. I use multivariate regression models to investigate the characteristics associated with misreporting. Finally, I examine whether misreporting marriages and marriage dates affects marriage indicators. RESULTS Results indicate that 28.3% of men and 17.9% of women omitted at least one marriage in one of the survey waves. Multivariate regression models show that misreporting is not random: marriage, individual, interviewer, and survey characteristics are associated with marriage omission and marriage date inconsistencies. Misreporting also affects marriage indicators. CONCLUSIONS This is the first study of its kind to examine the reliability of marriage histories collected in the context of Sub-Saharan Africa. Although marriage histories are frequently used to study marriage dynamics, until now no knowledge has existed on the degree of misreporting. Misreporting in marriage histories is shown to be non-negligent and could potentially affect analyses.

Pragmatic tradition or romantic aspiration? The causes of impulsive marriage and early divorce among women in rural Malawi

“…Other studies that have followed young women in Malawi closely during the first years of their first union found even higher proportions, particularly in the south (Grant and Soler-Hampejsek 2014). The difference between these findings and our own are likely to reflect an underreporting by older women of early, very short marriages that are deemed unsuccessful (Chae 2016).…”

“…We restricted the analyses to women because men and women have different marital patterns and women tend to report on unions in more reliable ways than men (Chae 2016). We further limited our sample to respondents aged 50 and under, as older women are more likely to misreport early unions, especially if they were of short duration and were deemed unsuccessful (Reniers 2003).…”

“…Given our focus on the first years of a respondent's union and the fact that women tend to report on unions more reliably than men (Chae 2016), we chose to treat men and women separately. As the qualitative data targeted young people it also contains more accounts of divorce from a woman's perspective, as men typically get married at a later age.…”

Parental Divorce and Children’s Schooling in Rural Malawi

“…Prior research has shown that some men and women underreport marriages and divorces when asked to retrospectively report them in surveys (Chae 2016). This poses a potential problem because this study relies on women’s reports of marriages and divorces in retrospective marriage histories to determine whether a child’s parents are divorced.…”

“…To minimize this problem, I reconstructed marriage histories for women who were interviewed in 2006, 2008, and 2010. The algorithm used to reconstruct marriage histories is outlined elsewhere (Chae 2016). …”