Abortion Norms and Stigma Scale (Smith et al., 2016)

• Populations: Adolescents & Young Adults
• Age ranges: 18-24
• Languages: English
• Countries: United States

Items

Subscales

• Conditional Acceptability, 4 Items
• Anticipated Reactions, 7 Items
• Misperceptions, 2 Items
• Attitudes, 8 Items

Example Items

• If I got pregnant accidentally and decided to have an abortion, the people who matter most to me would be mad.

Responses

Items used one of three 5- point Likert-type scale:

• 1=strongly disagree
• 2=disagree
• 3=neither agree nor disagree
• 4=agree
• 5=strongly agree

Or

• 1=not at all
• 2=a little bit
• 3=somewhat
• 4=quite
• 5=extremely

Or

• 1=extremely unlikely
• 2=unlikely
• 3=neutral
• 4=likely
• 5=extremely likely

Scoring

“Items with negative factor loading and positively worded items were reverse-coded so that higher scores on each scale and subscale reflect more negative attitudes and stigma around that pregnancy decision”.

Citations

Smith, Whitney, “Measuring reproductive norms and stigma and examining their roles in unintended pregnancy-related health behavior among young adult women” (2016). All ETDs from UAB. 2998. https://digitalcommons.library.uab.edu/etd-collection/2998.

Team comments

This measure was developed as part of a set including:

• Parenting Norms and Stigma Scale (Smith et al., 2016)
• Adoption Norms and Stigma Scale (Smith et al., 2016)
• Abortion Norms and Stigma Scale (Smith et al., 2016)