Toward a Multidimensional Measure of Pregnancy Intentions: Evidence from the United States

Abstract

Widely used dichotomous categorical measures of pregnancy intentions do not represent well the complexity of factors involved in women's intentions. We used a variety of exploratory statistical methods to examine measures of pregnancy intention in the 2002 National Survey of Family Growth (N = 3,032 pregnancies). Factor analyses identified two key dimensions of pregnancy intentions (desire and mistiming) and two smaller nondimensional categories (overdue and don't care). Desire included both affective and cognitive variables, as well as partner-specific factors. Similar pregnancy-intention dimensions were found for adolescent and adult women, across socioeconomic status, and among racial and ethnic groups. Both desire and mistiming were highly predictive of the decision to abort or continue the pregnancy. These analyses strongly support prior demographic thinking about the importance of both the timing of pregnancy and wanting a baby, but suggest that multidimensional rather than simple categorical measures of pregnancy intentions should be used.

Uncertainty in fertility intentions in Britain, 1979-2007

“…Schaeffer and Thomson's (1992) study, providing ample evidence that routine survey questions are insufficient to capture the quality and degree of respondents' uncertainty, together with Thomson and Brandreth (1995), would make an excellent starting point. Recent research on improving measures of pregnancy intendedness is a further resource (Kaufmann et al 1997;Bachrach and Newcomer 1999;Stanford et al 2000;Barrett et al 2004;Stevens-Simon et al 2005;Santelli et al 2009;Schwartz et al 2010). Third, another approach to measuring expectations and intentions is using probabilistic questions to elicit an assessment of level of certainty in continuous rather than classified form (Burden 1997;Manski 2004;Delavande 2008).…”

Abortion Surveillance — United States, 2014

“…First, abortion surveillance is needed to guide and evaluate the success of programs aimed at preventing unintended pregnancies. Although pregnancy intentions can be difficult to assess (79)(80)(81)(82)(83)(84), abortion surveillance provides an important measure of pregnancies that are unwanted. Second, routine abortion surveillance is needed to assess trends in clinical practice patterns over time.…”

Race/Ethnicity and Pregnancy Decision Making: The Role of Fatalism and Subjective Social Standing

“…We did note a correlation between the outcome as measured and women reporting being ''very happy'' about their pregnancy (AOR, 95% CI for the outcome 0.46, 0.25-0.86 among women who were ''very happy''), a suggestion that our measure may track with intent. Santelli et al 33 recently reported a moderate correlation between trying to get pregnant and happiness about pregnancy and described ''trying'' as one cognitive factor predictive of pregnancy intent. 34 Other measures have endured varied criticisms of their ability to measure unintended pregnancy as well, and currently there is no gold standard for the determination of pregnancy intent.…”