The survey's aim was the examination of these women's sexual, contraceptive, and fertility behaviors, and factors associated with these behaviors. Also collected from each respondent was information regarding residence, household composition, education, and employment. Complete pregnancy histories were obtained for all ever-pregnant women. A relationship history, spanning the time from the date of first sexual intercourse to the interview date, and which included characteristics of sexual unions and characteristics of partners, was obtained from all non-virgin respondents. In contrast to many previous fertility-related surveys, a key feature of this survey was the use of a life-history approach. The life-history calendar was used in conjunction with the interview schedule to facilitate the respondents' recall accuracy through visual linkages between certain experiences or events across domains. The intent of this method was to reconstruct a single lifehistory for each respondent which would reflect the timing and nature of each event occurring within the framework of the event domains selected for consideration. Data collected in this manner permit the examination of processes (or of events that are essentially processes), rather than structure, and provide the opportunity for assessment of the factors influencing these processes. In this context, the criterion event (dependent variable) as well as the predictor events (explanatory or independent variables) may be analyzed as processes.

Examples of criterion events might include the formation of sexual unions, cohabitation, contraception, pregnancy, birth of a child, marriage, and so on. Such events are life course transitions, which often alter the postition of individuals in the life cycle, and are characterized by three interrelated dimensions: number, timing, and sequencing of events. More specifically, number refers to the proportion of individuals experiencing a certain event; timing refers to the pace at which the event occurs; and sequencing refers to the ordering of the event, with respect to some other event.

Life-history data have a time dimension associated with them; the information collected on events within each domain includes both substantive content and a time value. The life-history approach, as used in this survey, is analogous to repeated measures on the same individuals at different time points. Therefore, it is somewhat different from an aggregation of data from several similar surveys that also contain a time dimension, but that present, in effect, successive measures on different samples of individuals. This approach, therefore, introduces some of the advantages of the longitudinal design into the cross-sectional survey. Life-history data differ also from panel data or "before-after" data which record data for the same individual at specific points in time only.