Individual changes in abortion knowledge and attitudes

Kim, Taehyun; Steinberg, Julia R.

doi:10.1016/j.socscimed.2023.115722

Cited by 4 publications

(5 citation statements)

References 44 publications

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“…My experience changed my opinion of them, but [I still wish] they didn’t primarily exist to perform abortions.” Here, the emphasis is far less on information or support sharing, rather the purpose is to articulate personal views about abortion and defend them accordingly. These findings align with ongoing abortion attitude research citing complex or nuanced abortion views that do not neatly fit into a singular label [ 52 - 54 ].…”

Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 81%

Analyzing Reddit Forums Specific to Abortion That Yield Diverse Dialogues Pertaining to Medical Information Seeking and Personal Worldviews: Data Mining and Natural Language Processing Comparative Study

Valdez,

Mena-Meléndez,

Crawford

et al. 2024

J Med Internet Res

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Background Attitudes toward abortion have historically been characterized via dichotomized labels, yet research suggests that these labels do not appropriately encapsulate beliefs on abortion. Rather, contexts, circumstances, and lived experiences often shape views on abortion into more nuanced and complex perspectives. Qualitative data have also been shown to underpin belief systems regarding abortion. Social media, as a form of qualitative data, could reveal how attitudes toward abortion are communicated publicly in web-based spaces. Furthermore, in some cases, social media can also be leveraged to seek health information. Objective This study applies natural language processing and social media mining to analyze Reddit (Reddit, Inc) forums specific to abortion, including r/Abortion (the largest subreddit about abortion) and r/AbortionDebate (a subreddit designed to discuss and debate worldviews on abortion). Our analytical pipeline intends to identify potential themes within the data and the affect from each post. Methods We applied a neural network–based topic modeling pipeline (BERTopic) to uncover themes in the r/Abortion (n=2151) and r/AbortionDebate (n=2815) subreddits. After deriving the optimal number of topics per subreddit using an iterative coherence score calculation, we performed a sentiment analysis using the Valence Aware Dictionary and Sentiment Reasoner to assess positive, neutral, and negative affect and an emotion analysis using the Text2Emotion lexicon to identify potential emotionality per post. Differences in affect and emotion by subreddit were compared. Results The iterative coherence score calculation revealed 10 topics for both r/Abortion (coherence=0.42) and r/AbortionDebate (coherence=0.35). Topics in the r/Abortion subreddit primarily centered on information sharing or offering a source of social support; in contrast, topics in the r/AbortionDebate subreddit centered on contextualizing shifting or evolving views on abortion across various ethical, moral, and legal domains. The average compound Valence Aware Dictionary and Sentiment Reasoner scores for the r/Abortion and r/AbortionDebate subreddits were 0.01 (SD 0.44) and −0.06 (SD 0.41), respectively. Emotionality scores were consistent across the r/Abortion and r/AbortionDebate subreddits; however, r/Abortion had a marginally higher average fear score of 0.36 (SD 0.39). Conclusions Our findings suggest that people posting on abortion forums on Reddit are willing to share their beliefs, which manifested in diverse ways, such as sharing abortion stories including how their worldview changed, which critiques the value of dichotomized abortion identity labels, and information seeking. Notably, the style of discourse varied significantly by subreddit. r/Abortion was principally leveraged as an information and outreach source; r/AbortionDebate largely centered on debating across various legal, ethical, and moral abortion domains. Collectively, our findings suggest that abortion remains an opaque yet politically charged issue for people and that social media can be leveraged to understand views and circumstances surrounding abortion.

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Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 81%

Analyzing Reddit Forums Specific to Abortion That Yield Diverse Dialogues Pertaining to Medical Information Seeking and Personal Worldviews: Data Mining and Natural Language Processing Comparative Study

Valdez,

Mena-Meléndez,

Crawford

et al. 2024

J Med Internet Res

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…Here, the emphasis is far less on information or support sharing, rather the purpose is to articulate personal views about abortion and defend them accordingly. These findings align with ongoing abortion attitude research citing complex or nuanced abortion views that do not neatly fit into a singular label [52][53][54].…”

Section: The R/abortiondebate Subreddit and Discussion Of Abortion Id...supporting

confidence: 80%

Analyzing Reddit Forums Specific to Abortion That Yield Diverse Dialogues Pertaining to Medical Information Seeking and Personal Worldviews: Data Mining and Natural Language Processing Comparative Study (Preprint)

Valdez¹,

Mena-Meléndez²,

Crawford³

2023

Preprint

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BACKGROUND Abortion attitudes have historically been dichotomized labels, yet research suggests these labels do not appropriately encapsulate abortion beliefs. Qualitative data has also been shown to underpin belief systems about abortion. Social media, as a form of qualitative data, could reveal how abortion attitudes depart from the dichotomy. OBJECTIVE This study applies Natural Language Processing and social media mining to analyze Reddit forums specific to abortion, including to identify potential themes within the data and predict affect from each post. METHODS We applied the following methods to analyze and visualize (n=5,128) posts scraped from Reddit: (1) term frequency inverse document frequency (TF-IDF) calculations (to assess term frequency), (2) k-means clustering (to group like words and phrases into themes), and (3) principal components analysis (PCA) (to visualize our data). We also applied a sentiment analysis to determine affect in our data. RESULTS Our analyses revealed six clusters: (1) Complex Abortion Beliefs (n=1,566); (2) Abortion Decision Making (n=1,162); (3) Defining Abortion Identity Labels (1,022); (4) Medication Abortion (n=746); (5) Asking for Advice (n=604); and (6) Reddit Forum Rules and Regulations (n=38). Sentiment scores were negative, indicating poor affect. CONCLUSIONS Our findings suggest people posting on Reddit abortion forums are willing to share their beliefs, which manifested in diverse ways including sharing one’s abortion story (and how their worldview changed), critiquing the value of dichotomized abortion identity labels, and information seeking. Collectively, our findings suggest abortion views do not always align with pro-choice and pro-life labels but mired in complexity.

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“…At the same time, almost 80% of participants placed a low value on reproductive choice, i.e., one's values related to homosexuality, abortion, and divorce. Several factors can shape an individual's value of reproductive choice, including a country's legal context, social norms, religious beliefs, societal stigmas, and personal experiences [17,31,32]. Homosexuality remains criminalized in the countries from which the majority of the study participants originated, such as Syria, Afghanistan, Eritrea, and Somalia [33].…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…While social norms and values regarding SRHR vary across populations, cultures, and countries, they consistently play a crucial role in shaping individuals' perspectives, knowledge, choices, and behaviors related to relationships, intimacy, and family [10,13]. For example, social norms that stigmatize abortion have been associated with limited knowledge of abortion law [16], as well as poor mental health and delayed access to safe abortion services among people who need them [17]. Young women who live in contexts characterized by discriminatory norms toward premarital sex often experience restrictions on their ability to discuss sex with their partners [18].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Reproductive agency and the value of reproductive choice among migrants from the Middle East and North Africa and Sub-Saharan Africa living in Sweden–a cross-sectional analysis of the Migrants World Values Survey

Kop,

Båge,

Tirado

et al. 2024

Preprint

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Background Sweden has a longstanding history of promoting sexual reproductive health and rights. Reproductive decision-making is a fundamental right, but an individual’s decision-making power differs across contexts. We examined self-reported reproductive agency and the value individuals place on reproductive choice among migrants in Sweden originating from the Middle East or North Africa (MENA) and Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA).Methods This cross-sectional study used face-to-face interview data from the 2018–2019 Migrant World Values Survey (MWVS) and included individuals 18–49 years old who migrated to Sweden from MENA or SSA. Partial proportional odds models were used to estimate adjusted odds ratios (aOR) and corresponding confidence intervals (CI) of associations between sociodemographic factors and two outcomes: 1) reproductive agency (decision-making power on when, with whom, and how many children to have), measured on a 10-point scale categorized as low (1–4), moderate (5–7), and high (8–10); and 2) the value of reproductive choice, measured by the WVS choice index comprising the justifiability of divorce, abortion, and homosexuality, categorized as 0-<0.4 (low), 0.4-<0.7 (moderate), and 0.7-1.0 (high).Results Between September 2018 and November 2019, 7991 participants responded to the MWVS, of whom 4669 met the inclusion criteria. Less than five per cent of respondents placed a high value on reproductive choice, whereas 73% expressed a high degree of reproductive agency. Living in Sweden ≥ 4 years was associated with a high value of reproductive choice (aOR 1.76, 95% CI 1.15–2.67), but not with reproductive agency. Identifying as Muslim was associated with a lower likelihood of valuing choice (aOR 0.44, 95% CI 0.32–0.63) but was not associated with reproductive agency (aOR 1.40, 95% CI 0.87–2.24). Neither age nor reason for migration (family reunification or as a refugee) were associated with either outcome.Conclusion Our study found that migrants from MENA and SSA expressed a high degree of reproductive agency. Migrants placed a low value on reproductive choice; however, this increased with time spent in Sweden. Understanding factors associated with migrants’ sense of reproductive agency and their values and how these change over time in Sweden provides a foundation for working towards equitable sexual and reproductive health and rights.

show abstract

Individual changes in abortion knowledge and attitudes

Cited by 4 publications

References 44 publications

Analyzing Reddit Forums Specific to Abortion That Yield Diverse Dialogues Pertaining to Medical Information Seeking and Personal Worldviews: Data Mining and Natural Language Processing Comparative Study

Analyzing Reddit Forums Specific to Abortion That Yield Diverse Dialogues Pertaining to Medical Information Seeking and Personal Worldviews: Data Mining and Natural Language Processing Comparative Study

Analyzing Reddit Forums Specific to Abortion That Yield Diverse Dialogues Pertaining to Medical Information Seeking and Personal Worldviews: Data Mining and Natural Language Processing Comparative Study (Preprint)

Reproductive agency and the value of reproductive choice among migrants from the Middle East and North Africa and Sub-Saharan Africa living in Sweden–a cross-sectional analysis of the Migrants World Values Survey

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