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Measuring Public Attitudes on Abortion: Methodological and SubstantiveConsiderations
Elizabeth Adell Cook; Ted G. Jelen; Clyde Wilcox
Family Planning Perspectives
, Vol. 25, No. 3. (May - Jun., 1993), pp. 118-121+145.
Stable URL:http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0014-7354%28199305%2F06%2925%3A3%3C118%3AMPAOAM%3E2.0.CO%3B2-G
Family Planning Perspectives
is currently published by Guttmacher Institute.Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use, available athttp://www.jstor.org/about/terms.html. JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use provides, in part, that unless you have obtainedprior permission, you may not download an entire issue of a journal or multiple copies of articles, and you may use content inthe JSTOR archive only for your personal, non-commercial use.Please contact the publisher regarding any further use of this work. Publisher contact information may be obtained athttp://www.jstor.org/journals/agi.html.Each copy of any part of a JSTOR transmission must contain the same copyright notice that appears on the screen or printedpage of such transmission.The JSTOR Archive is a trusted digital repository providing for long-term preservation and access to leading academic journals and scholarly literature from around the world. The Archive is supported by libraries, scholarly societies, publishers,and foundations. It is an initiative of JSTOR, a not-for-profit organization with a mission to help the scholarly community takeadvantage of advances in technology. For more information regarding JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org.http://www.jstor.orgTue Jan 22 03:20:01 2008
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Measuring Public Attitudes on Abortion:Methodological and Substantive Considerations
By
Elizabeth Adell Cook, Ted
G.
Jelen and Clyde Wilcox
Data from a
1989
CBS
Newsmew
York
Times survey are used to examine the effect that theframing of questions on abortion has on estimates of what proportions of the population sup-port various egalpositions. The nationwide data and results from six state polls show thatgen-era1 questions with only two or three options overestimate the proportions of respondents whoeither favor a ban on all abortion or who would allow abortion under all circumstances. Ques-tions that pose specific circumstances result in movement of respondents out of extreme cat-egories and into more moderate ones. Even respondents who indicate they would favor abor-tion in all specific circumstances and those who favor abortion in none are likely to moderatetheir views when asked f they support restrictions that have been proposed in a number of states.
(Family Planning Perspectives, 25:118-121
&
145, 1993)
I
n the 1989 ruling
Webster
v.
Reproduc-tive Health Services,
the
U.
S. SupremeCourt indicated a willingness to con-sider greater state regulation of abortionthan had previously been allowed. In latercases, including
Planned Parenthood ofSouth-western Pennsylvania
v.
Casey
in 1992, theCourt articulated a standard that states canimpose regulations that make abortionsmore difficult to obtain, as long as these re-strictions do not fundamentally interferewith a woman's access to abortion. Statelegislatures can now enact restrictions onabortion, although Congress is consider-ing national abortion rights legislation.
In
either case, abortion policy has becomethe responsibility of elected officials, whoare presumably more responsive to publicopinion than are the courts. Since abortionis an issue on which most Americans ap-pear to have well-formed, stable opinions,'it seems that public attitudes could be im-portant sources of abortion policy.Several observers have suggested that thefuture politics of abortion may be acrimo-nious and bitterlv ~ontested.~ristin Lukerand Donald ~r&ber~ave separately sug-gested that activists on both sides of theabortion issue have relatively coherent(and conflicting) sets of views on religion,gender roles and sexual morality, and thatthese competing worldviews make com-promise and even dialogue difficult.If the activist-level patterns described
Elizabeth Adell Cook is a visiting assistant professor ofgovernment at the American University; Ted
G.
Jelen isa professor of political science at Illinois Benedictine Col-lege; and Clyde Wilcox is an associate professor of gov-ernment at Georgetown University. The authors are re-sponsible for all interpretations of the data in this article.
by Luker and Granberg also characterizethe views of the general public, the abor-tion issue may come to distort the normalpattern of electoral and legislative politicsby superimposing a nonnegotiable issueover other political matters. By contrast,if the general public holds more moder-ate or nuanced attitudes on abortion, theissue may be dealt with through compro-mise or accommodated through conven-tional political means.Public attitudes toward abortion havereceived a good deal of scholarly attention,especially since the
Webster
decision. Abor-tion questions are routinely included inpublic opinion polls, but these questionsvary widely in format. Little empiricalwork has been done to assess the impactof the use of different question wordingsand formats on estimates of abortion at-titudes. Such estimates have imvortantimplications for the future of the abor-tion debate.The General Social Survey (GSS) in-cludes a series of six specific tems askingif abortion should be legal under variousconcrete circumstances, and a more gen-eral item asking if abortion should alwaysbe legal. The specific items are routinelycombined to form a single scale of supportfor legal abortion, or to form two scalesmeasuring support for abortion givenphysical or social
problem^.^
In
contrast, most other surveys have em-ployed a single, general item that offersthree or four policy options with respect toabortion. Since 1972, for example, the Na-tional Election Study (NES)has includedan item that posed four positions on abor-tion, although the wording of this questionchanged in 1984.4 n voting-site exit pollssponsored by newspapers and TV net-works, as well as in polls conducted byGallup and other survey research firms, athree-category item on abortion is usuallyincl~ded.~hese more general items takeless survey time, but may not capture in-formation on the nuances of respondentpositions. Several studies use other typesof items measuring abortion attitudes,suchas asking approval for a Constitutionalamendment banning abortion, or askingsupport for overturning
Roe
v.
W~de,~
utthese two types of questions-the singlegeneral item, and the GSS-type specificitems-form the basis for most research onpublic attitudes toward legal abortion.Few surveys contain more than onetype of abortion question, so it is difficultto determine exactly how responses tothese tvves of items-differ, or how other
21
types of items might modify our under-standing of abortion attitudes in Ameri-ca. In September and October 1989, CBSNews and
The New York Times
conducteda national poll and six state polls on abor-tion attitudes?
A
wide variety of abortion-related questions were asked of 1,347 re-spondents in the national survey, 747respondents in California, 630 in Florida,760 in Illinois, 744 in Ohio, 879 in Penn-sylvania and 742 in Texas. This article usesthese data to answer two questions. First,how do responses to the specific items likethose in the GSS correlate with responsesto more general abortion items? second,how do other types of questions expandour understanding of public attitudes to-ward abortion?
The Abortion Questions
Each state poll contained an average of 34abortion-related items: for this study weused those questions common across allstates and most relevant to the types ofquestions asked in other studies. The exactwording and order of the abortion itemsin the CBS NewslNew
York Tirnes
poll ap-pear in Table 1. The survey first asked twogeneral questions similar to those used inmedia exit polls in 1989 and 1990.8Thefirst item offered three options: that abor-tionbe legal as it is now, that
it
be limitedto cases of rape, incest and danger to the
Family
Planning Perspectives
woman's life, and that it not be permittedat all. The second item asked if a womanshould be permitted to have an abortionif her doctor agrees to it. Respondentswere permitted to volunteer a qualifiedanswer, such as "it depends."Previous research has suggested thatthe ordering of abortion items may influ-ence survey res~lts.~n this case, after therespondents had answered these twoquestions and some intervening items,they were presented with seven specific,GSS-type questions. Five of these, mir-roring GSS wording, asked whether therespondent thought abortion should belegal in these instances: if the woman'shealth is in danger, if the woman is singleand does not wish to marry, if the familyis too poor to support additional children,if the fetus has a severe defect and if thepregnancy is the result of rape. In place ofa GSS item about the legality of abortionfor a couple desiring no more children, theCBS News/New
York
Times survey substi-tuted two items asking whether abortionshould be legal for a pregnant teenagerwho would have to drop out of school tocomplete the pregnancy, or for a profes-sional woman who would have to inter-rupt her career to bear a child.Another general question followed im-mediately after the seven GSS-type ques-tions: Respondents were asked to agreeor disagree with the statement that thegovernment has no business banningabortion even when it is the wrong thingto do. Respondents could volunteer aqualified answer. The final general ques-tion offered three choices: that abortionbe available to all who want it, that it beavailable but more difficult to obtain, orthat it be unavailable.Finally, the questionnaire contained aseries of items that asked respondentstheir opinion on certain restrictions onabortion that would make the procedureharder to obtain. These included parentalnotification, parental consent, ;iabilitytests after
20
weeks, additional restrictionson abortion in private clinics, and banningabortion in public hospitals. These itemsallowed respondents only to support oroppose the restrictions.
Results
Specific vs. General Questions
HOW
do resvonses to the svecific. GSS-tvpe cluestions differ from responses to
dl
L
more general questions? In Table
2,
wepresent the percentages of respondents inthe national and state surveys who agreewith allowing abortion in the
specific
in-stances listed. Although there are differ-
Volume 25, Number 3, May/June 1993
Table 1. Wording and order of abortion questions,
CBS
NewslNew
York
Times Poll, 1989
p-~~~
1.
Should abortion be legal as it is now, or legal only in such cases as rape, incest, or to save the life of the mother,or should it not be permitted at all?
2.
If a woman wants to have an abortion, and her doctor agrees to it, should she be allowed o have an abortion or not?
3.
Should it be legal or against the law for a pregnant woman to obtain an abortion if:a. The woman's health is seriously endangered by the pregnancy?b. She is not married and does not want to marry the father?c. The family has a very low income and cannot afford any more children?d. The pregnancy would force a teenager to drop out of school?e. There is a chance of a serious defect in the baby?f. The pregnancy would force a professional woman to interrupt her career?g. The pregnancy is the result of rape?
4.
Do you agree or disagree with the following statement: Even in cases where
I
might think abortion is the wrongthing to do,
I
don't think the government has any business preventing a woman from having an abortion.
5.
Which of these comes closest to your view?a. Abortion should be generally available to those who want it?b. Abortion should be available but more difficult to get than it is now?c. Abortion should not be available?
6.
Here are some possible restrictions on abortion hat are being debated n some states. Would you favor or oppose:a. Requiring that at least one parent be told before a girl under
18
years of age could have an abortion?b. Requiring the consentof her parents before a girl under
18
years of age could have an abortion?c. In a pregnancy of
20
weeks or more, requiring a test to make sure that the fetus is not developed enough tolive outside the womb before a woman could have an abortion?d. Prohibiting public employees or public hospitals from performing abortions?e. Passing laws that make it difficult for private clinics to perform abortions, such as requiring them to have spe-cial equipment and staff like hospital operatinq rooms in order to be licensed?
ences between residents in the various abortion in all seven circumstances, whilestates, there is a consensus in the order-the proportions ranged from 3141% in theing of the specific abortion items. In eachstate surveys. Six percent of national re-state, support is highest for abortion tospondents oppose legal abortion in all in-protect the health of the woman, and low-stances, with state proportions rangingest for abortion to prevent the interruptionfrom
4-8%.
of the woman's career.
In
the national sur- The general questions elicit more all-or-vey, 31% of respondents support legal none responses than do the specific ques-
Table
2.
Percentages of abortion poll respondents, by answers to questions asked, accordingto survey location
Questions and U.S. Cal. Fla. Ill. Ohio Penn. Texasanswers
N=1,193 N=659 N=564 N=677 N=647 N=779 N=657
Should abortion be legal if:Woman's health is endangered
91 94 94 94 92 92 92
Woman
is
rapedFetus has serious defect
8776867988798675867385758472
Family cannot afford child
51 60 60 57 49 52 47
Woman is unmarried
51 6 1 59 58 50 54 49
!
5035564656475242463750374635
None of the above
6 6 4 4 7 7 8
All of the above
31 40 41 36 31 32 31
Abortion should be:Legal as now
Le:yyL
:a)vee'i:ztnn's
life
4540572952375136434347394343
~otermitted at all
15 14 11 13 14 14 14
Abortion
should be:
Generally availableDifficult to obtainNot availableAbortion should be legal
if
doctor agrees:Yes
59 67 67 66 60 61 58
Depends
14 12 11 14 13 15 16
NO'
28 21 22 20 27 24 27
Government should not ban abortion:AgreeDependsDisagree
70426744237542273324703277342465331
-
--
;~&~N~?ndenanswered every questlon The number glven at the top of the column
IS
the smallest number to have an-
119
of 00
Jelen, Cook and Wilcox - Measuring Public Attitudes on Abortion - Methodological and Substantive C
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