A4mong the dozen or so theories of contraceptive motivation to appear in the literature in recent years, none has had the widespread appeal of Kristin Luker's Taking Chances. 1 It is easy to understand the appeal of Luker's theory. The theory provides an intuitively plausible and politically acceptable explanation for contraceptive behavior. However, intuition and politics are not substitutes for empirical confirmation, and to date Luker's theory has not been supported by research.2 The need for empirical confirmation is particularly apparent in this case, since Luker's original research did not include any controls. Luker drew her theory from relatively unstructured interviews with a small sample of contraceptive risk-takers who were, at the time, experiencing therapeutic abortions.3 Because Luker's sample did not also include a reasonable comparison group of contraceptive users, we cannot be sure whether the motives attributed to contraceptive risk-takers are different from those of contraceptive users. Nor can we be sure whether any difference in motives that might exist between the two groups would be sufficient to account for their differences in contraceptive behavior. The research reported here was designed to overcome this serious shortcoming in Luker's research by providing a test of the theory among a more contraceptively varied population. It was fully expected that this research would lend needed support to Luker's theory, but it failed to do so.
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Crosbie et al. (1982) studied this question.