Attitudes Toward Abortion in a Provincial Area of New Zealand: Differentials and Determinants

Abstract

Previous studies of attitudes toward abortion in New Zealand have not provided detailed analyses of differentials in such attitudes, nor have they used multivariate techniques to assess the relative importance of different background variables in accounting for variation in abortion attitudes. This study, using data from a survey of women aged 16-44 years in the Manawatu Region, examines the responses to five abortion attitude questions. The responses have been converted to a single abortion attitude scale, which has been used (a) to examine the bivariate relationships with thirteen different background variables, and (b) as a dependent variable in a series of multivariate analyses using Multiple Classification Analysis. The multivariate results point to the importance of religious beliefs, religion, and family size variables as being the most important independent variables (among those included in the analysis) in accounting for variation in the abortion attitude scale.