Panels
Jozkowski, K.N., Cleland, K., Crawford, B., McClelland, S., Valdez, D., Turner, R., & Lo, W.J., (2019, October 19-21). A multi-dimensional approach to assessing abortion attitudes in the U.S. Society of Family Planning (SFP) Annual Meeting. Los Angeles, California
Kelly Cleland provided a brief overview of the landscape of abortion attitudes and the need for improved measures to assess abortion attitudes. She briefly focused on the conceptual and methodological limitations of current measures. Sara McClelland provided an overview of a content analysis of previously used items to assess abortion and the corresponding item bank (N = 456) developed to catalog how researchers have assessed abortion attitudes. Kristen Jozkowski introduced an elicitation survey developed for this project based on the Reasoned Action Approach (RAA) as well as pilot findings from the corresponding RAA-based open-ended survey (N = 179). The RAA is a public health theory geared toward understanding people’s salient beliefs, norms, and circumstances associated with a particular health behavior—in our case, abortion. Ronna Turner summarized findings from a pilot Abortion Complexity Screener (N = 516) as well as innovative statistical techniques we used to categorize people based on their complex and ambivalent attitudes toward abortion. Brandon Crawford provided a summary of findings from two waves of survey data (N Wave 1 = 3,030; N Wave 2 = 3,102), which assessed people’s knowledge and sentiments toward Roe v. Wade and Brett Kavanaugh during his nomination and confirmation to the Supreme Court of the United States. To account for the linguistic diversity in the United States, we co-constructed all instruments and conducted all data collections concurrently in English and Spanish; we will continue to co-construct instruments and concurrently collect data in both languages throughout the project. Danny Valdez provided an overview of our dual-focused approach to item and survey development. He highlighted our bilingual and bicultural expertise and our use of conceptual translation to yield the most culturally relevant items and measures in both languages. The panel concluded with Kelly Cleland highlighting immediate and longer-term next steps. She facilitated audience engagement by soliciting specific feedback, prior to opening up general discussion.