Department of Epidemiology, Rollins School of Public Health, Emory University, Atlanta, GA, United States of America.
Ibis Reproductive Health, Oakland, CA, United States of America.
PLoS One. 2022 Jun 3;17(6):e0269476. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0269476. eCollection 2022.
Abortion is highly stigmatized in the United States which prevents its accurate measurement in surveys. The list experiment aims to improve the reporting of abortion history. We evaluated whether a list experiment resulted in higher reporting of abortion experiences than did two direct questions. Utilizing data from a representative survey of adult women of reproductive age in Ohio, we examined abortion history using two direct questions and a double list experiment. Through the double list experiment, we asked respondents to report how many of two lists of health items they had experienced; one list included abortion. We compared weighted history of abortion between these measures and by respondent demographic characteristics (age and socioeconomic status). Estimates of abortion history were similar between direct and list experiment questions. When measured with the two different direct question of abortion history, 8.4% and 8.0% of all respondents indicated ever having an abortion and with the list experiment, 8.5% indicated ever having an abortion. In a Midwestern state-level survey, the list experiment did not lead to increases in abortion reporting as compared to the direct questions. Subgroup analyses require larger samples, and future iterations should incorporate related but non-stigmatized control items to reduce misclassification and under-powering of such subgroup analyses.
在美国，堕胎行为受到高度污名化，这使得对其进行准确的调查测量变得困难。清单实验旨在提高堕胎史的报告准确性。我们评估了清单实验是否会比直接询问两个问题导致更高的堕胎经历报告率。利用俄亥俄州育龄成年女性的代表性调查数据，我们使用两个直接问题和双清单实验来检查堕胎史。通过双清单实验，我们要求受访者报告他们在两个健康项目清单中经历了多少项；其中一个清单包括堕胎。我们比较了这些措施以及受访者人口统计学特征（年龄和社会经济地位）之间的堕胎史加权情况。直接问题和清单实验问题得出的堕胎史估计值相似。当使用两种不同的直接问题询问堕胎史时，8.4%和 8.0%的所有受访者表示曾有过堕胎经历，而使用清单实验时，8.5%的受访者表示曾有过堕胎经历。在一项中西部州级调查中，与直接问题相比，清单实验并没有导致堕胎报告的增加。亚组分析需要更大的样本量，未来的迭代应纳入相关但非污名化的对照项目，以减少此类亚组分析的错误分类和权力不足。
