Participant‐driven salient beliefs regarding abortion: Implications for abortion attitude measurement

Abstract Objective Guided by the Reasoned Action Approach, we used a salient belief elicitation (SBE) to elicit participant‐generated beliefs regarding abortion. SBE is a formative research technique used to elicit people's control (i.e., perceived facilitators and barriers associated with a behavior), behavioral (i.e., perceived positive and negative consequences of doing a behavior), and normative (i.e., influence of important people/peers regarding a behavior) beliefs regarding a particular behavior (i.e., abortion). Methods We administered our SBE to English‐ and Spanish‐speaking U.S. adults ( N = 608) from NORC's AmeriSpeak® panel. We used inductive content and thematic analyses to assess open‐ended questions. Results We found that participants’ control and behavioral beliefs referenced circumstances used to assess abortion attitudes in polling item (e.g., rape) and reasons people seek abortion (e.g., financial reasons) as well as potential negative emotions (e.g., shame) and positive consequences (e.g., autonomy) associated with abortion. Participants indicated pregnant people's partners and people seeking abortion as salient referents. Conclusion Participants mentioned several contexts reflected in common measures used to assess abortion attitudes by national polls and surveys. However, we also found other relevant circumstances not reflected in common measures and a range of salient referents. We recommend abortion attitudes measures account for these participant‐driven salient beliefs.