"This paper details the authors' selection, design, and use of a life history calendar (LHC) to collect retrospective life course data. A sample of nine hundred [U.S.] 23-year-olds, originally interviewed in 1980, were asked about the incidence and timing of various life events in the nine years since their 15th birthday.... The following aspects of the LHC are described: (a) the concept, uses, and advantages of the LHC, (b) the time units and domains used, (c) the mode of recording the responses and the decisions and problems involved, (d) interviewer training, and (e) coding. The following results attest to the accuracy of the LHC retrospective data: (a) only four of the calendars had missing data in any month; (b) the data obtained in 1980 about current work, school attendance, marriage, and children showed a remarkable correspondence to the retrospective 1985 LHC reports of these events; (c) the interviewers were positive about the LHC's ability to increase respondent recall."

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This research has expanded our understanding of the determinants of adolescent sexuality in several directions. We have used a study of mothers and children to construct and estimate a model of the intergenerational transmission of sexual attitudes and behavior. With data collected from both mothers and children, we were able to proceed further than most past research and to consider both the attitudes and behaviors of mothers as reported by the mothers themselves. These data permitted an investigation of the determinants of maternal attitudes concerning adolescent sexuality as well as an examination of the influences of the attitudes and experiences of mothers on the attitudes, perceptions, and behavior of children. Obviously, limiting the study to white families prevents generalization of our findings to other subgroups of the population. The findings demonstrate the importance and relevance of parental and adolescent attitudes in understanding adolescent sexuality. Premarital sexuality is a salient issue to both young people and their parents. There are, however, very important and substantial differences in the attitudes of parents and children. On average, the attitudes of young people today are much less restrictive than those of their parents, reflecting either life cycle differences or the impact of social change. The intergenerational difference is recognized by young people themselves and probably affects the ability of parents to assist their maturing children in adjusting to and dealing with their sexuality--a difficulty likely to be reflected in the relative lack of success sexually active young people have in preventing pregnancy. Our findings also add to the research literature in demonstrating that although children, on average, have more permissive attitudes than their parents, the attitudes of individual parents tend to be reflected in the attitudes of individual children. Children whose mothers have less restrictive attitudes have, on average, less restrictive attitudes themselves. Further, the attitudes of mothers are also reflected in the behavior of their children, so on average, mothers with more permissive attitudes have children who are more sexually active. The influence of maternal attitudes, however, is stronger for children's attitudes than for their behavior. Of course, variability in children's attitudes and behavior--and even their perceptions of maternal attitudes--can only be partially explained by the attitudes of their mothers; but presumably, if the attitudes of other important family members, including fathers and siblings, were known, the prediction of adolescent attitudes would improve.(ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 400 WORDS)

A recognized problem in mounting longitudinal surveys concerns the costs and difficulties in maintaining response rates over time. This article details the techniques used to minimize response loss in a longitudinal study which maintained an 89% response rate over five interviews covering a fifteen-year period. These techniques centered on two problems common to all longitudinal studies: the difficulties involved in relocating respondents for subsequent interviews, and the necessity of maintaining respondent cooperation over repeated interviews. he value of longitudinal studies for social science research is widely recognized, but the difficulties and costs involved in locating and reinterviewing the same respondents frequently have discouraged researchers from attempting longitudinal research. Several recent studies (Clarridge et al., 1977; Crider et al., 1976) have demonstrated, however, that respondents can be followed successfully over fairly long time periods. This is a report on one such study, which maintained contact with 89% of those originally interviewed through four subsequent interviews over a fifteen-year span. The techniques used in this study to maintain contact and rapport with the respondents may prove useful to other researchers. AUTHORS' NOTE: The previous waves of this longitudinal study were conducted under the direction of Ronald Freedman, David Goldberg, and Lolagene Coombs of the University of Michigan. The survey reported on here was supported by NICHD grant HD-10407. The authors acknowledge the contribution made to the University of M~chigan. Deborah Freedman was a fellow at the East-West Center Population Institute at the time this article was written. The use of the facilities of the Population Institute and the helpful comments of Elizabeth Gould are gratefully acknowledged. An earlier version of this article appeared in the Asia and Pacific Census Forum 5(4~ the newsletter of the Population Institute.