Joyce C. Abma
Demographer, National Center for Health Statistics
Agency: Reproductive Statistics Branch
National Center for Health Statistics
6525 Belcrest Rd., Room 820 Hyattsville, MD
20782-2003
(301) 436-8731, ext. 123
jza2@cdc.gov
ACADEMIC TRAINING:
Ph.D., 1993, Sociology, The Ohio State
University, Columbus, Ohio
Dissertation Title:
"Transitions to Adulthood Among Young Women:
The Sequencing of Nest-Leaving, Marriage, and
First Birth"
M.A., 1988, Sociology, The Ohio State
University, Columbus, Ohio
B.A., 1984, Sociology, Wittenberg
University, Springfield, Ohio
EMPLOYMENT HISTORY
1993 to present - Demographer, National
Center for Health Statistics
1993 - Presidential Fellow, The Ohio
State University
1989 to 1993 - Research Assistant,
Center for Human Resource Research, The Ohio State
University. (National Longitudinal Surveys of
Youth)
1988 to 1989 - Teaching Assistant, The
Ohio State University
1988 - Research Assistant, "The
Hispanic Immigrant Context and Housing Market Conditions:
A Comparison of Anglo and Hispanic Populations", The
Ohio State University.
1987 - Research Assistant, "The
Impact of Technology on Work Organization and Work
Outcomes.", The Ohio State University
1986 - Teaching Assistant, The Ohio
State University.
Since 1993, Joyce Abma has worked as a
demographer for the National Center for Health
Statistics. Her activities are concentrated on a periodic
survey on the reproductive health and behavior of U.S.
women: the National Survey of Family Growth. She has
conducted research and prepared and presented reports on
the fertility and fertility-related behavior of U.S.
women, on such topics as the sexual behavior of teenagers
in the United States; non-voluntary sexual intercourse
among young women; unintended pregnancies; prenatal risk
behaviors among young women; and relinquishment of
non-marital births for adoption.
Part of a team responsible for
designing, implementing, and disseminating data from the
National Survey of Family Growth (NSFG), she has been
involved in questionnaire design, fieldwork monitoring,
data file preparation, and analysis of Cycle 5 of the
NSFG, which took place in 1995. The NSFG is a principal
source of estimates of sexual activity of women of
reproductive age. It allows examination of trends in
levels of sexual activity of teens over more than two
decades. She has been analyzing and reporting on the data
on sexual activity of teenage women, including new data
in the 1995 survey on nonvoluntary first intercourse,
characteristics of male sexual partners of teens, and the
number of male sexual partners teenage women have had.
She is also involved in research comparing sexual
activity and contraceptive use estimates across national
surveys.
PERTINENT RECENT PUBLICATIONS:
1998 Abma, Joyce, Anne Driscoll, and
Kristin Moore, "Young Women’s Degrees of
Control over First Intercourse: An Exploratory
Analysis,", Family Planning Perspectives,
30(1).
1997 Abma, Joyce, Anjani Chandra,
William Mosher, Linda Peterson, and Linda Piccinino,
"Fertility, family planning, and women’s
health: New data from the 1995 National Survey of Family
Growth," National Center for Health Statistics. Vital
and Health Statistics 23(19).
(forthcoming) Abma, Joyce, "Sexual
Behavior of Teenagers in the United States," in R.
Weissberg, C. Kuster, O. Reyes, and H. Walberg, (Eds.), Trends
in the Well-Being of Children and Youth, Thousand
Oaks, CA: Sage.
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