The Hull Family Survey

Abstract

This paper describes the main findings of the first stage in a planned longitudinal study of marriage and family planning amongst a representative sample of recently married couples in a northern city. The long-term aim of the research is to evaluate, by means of interviews repeated at successive 5-year intervals in the lives of these couples, the relationship between intended and achieved family size and to assess the factors associated with relative success and failure. The initial series of interviews provides much new information on patterns of mate selection, marriage and family planning intentions; it also represents the only recent survey of contraceptive behaviour during the first year of marriage.The major determinants of family-building behaviour are assessed and, amongst these, religion is found to be the most significant. Its effects are, however, mitigated by considerable marrying out amongst Catholics. The notion of the married couple as a rational decision-making unit in matters of family planning is supported by this survey and there is a relationship between desired family size and the efficacy of contraceptive usage. Two points of major methodological interest in fertility analysis are discussed. John Peelthe publicity appropriate to such a novel technique. There have also been marked Research procedure

Contraceptive Failure in the United States: A Critical Review of the Literature

“…Among 523 couples in the Family Growth in Metropolitan America survey, the Pearl index (maximum duration unknown) was 13.8, ranging from 17.1 during the interval from marriage to first birth to 12.3 during the interval from the first to the third births (Westoff et al, 1961). A much lower index was obtained from 96 couples in the Hull Family Survey who relied on the condom; the five-year Pearl index was 3.9 (Peel, 1972). In a small British trial involving only 85 women, John (1973) reported a Pearl index of 5.8; maximum exposure is not reported, but it must have been at least seven years.…”

“…The implied lifetable rate (if, contrary to expectation, the risk of failure were constant over time) for the entire sample is 15.5 percent (based on a Pearl index of 16.7). Peel (1972) reports a Pearl index of 21.9 among 62 couples during the first five years of marriage. Vessey et al (1982) obtained a much smaller index of 6.7; the maximum duration of exposure is not reported nor is there any further breakdown by age.…”

“…We think that the evidence from the clinical trials does not lend support to a typical failure rate at the low end of this range, so we again choose the midpoint. The pregnancy rate for withdrawal is based on the combined data contained in Westoff et al (1961) and Peel (1972), although we have little confidence that it is generalizable; the Pearl index is 19.68, so that the implied one-year lifetable failure rate would be 18.0 percent, under the assumption that the propensity to fail is constant.…”