1987 Alan Guttmacher Institute National Survey of Contraceptive Use Among Women Having Abortions
Investigators: Stanley K. Henshaw, Jane Silverman, Jacqueline Darroch Forrest & Elise Jones

1987 Alan Guttmacher Institute National Survey of Contraceptive Use Among Women Having Abortions was a project aimed at producing reliable national estimates of contraceptive failure rates, corrected for the underreporting of abortions. A nationally representative probability sample of abortion providers was drawn from AGI files, with data ultimately collected from 21 hospitals and 82 non-hospital facilities. The providers were asked to distribute questionnaires to all abortion patients during a specified period of time. The survey instrument was self- administered and covered such topics as age, race, and income; marital, work, education, and Medicaid status; contraceptive choice and use or non-use; and prior births and abortions. For a number of cases where there were missing data, the data were imputed by the original investigators. A total of 114 variables shed light on the characteristics of 9,480 abortion patients.