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Using panel data to examine pregnancy attitudes over time

There is a lack of research examining changes in women's fertility attitudes over relatively short periods of time. The aim of this study was to determine whether and how women's attempts to get pregnant and their desire to avoid pregnancy changed over six months' time as well as whic...

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Autores principales: Väisänen, Heini, Jones, Rachel K.
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: 2015
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4994192/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/27563690
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author Väisänen, Heini
Jones, Rachel K.
author_facet Väisänen, Heini
Jones, Rachel K.
author_sort Väisänen, Heini
collection PubMed
description There is a lack of research examining changes in women's fertility attitudes over relatively short periods of time. The aim of this study was to determine whether and how women's attempts to get pregnant and their desire to avoid pregnancy changed over six months' time as well as which characteristics and circumstances were associated with these changes. Using multinomial regression, we analyzed two panels of data from a sample of approximately 3,000 U.S. adult women gathered within six months apart. Only 4% of the women were trying to get pregnant at both time points, but six percent went from trying to not or vice versa. Two-thirds reported a strong desire to avoid pregnancy at both points, but 9% transitioned from strong to not strong and an additional 7% transitioned from not strong to strong. Women who transitioned to a more serious romantic relationship were at increased risk of transitioning to trying to become pregnant and, not surprisingly, to a weaker pregnancy avoidance. Some of the variables we tested, including changes in employment status and race/ethnicity, were associated with one outcome but not the other. The results highlight the importance of taking a holistic perspective of women's lives when studying pregnancy intentions and in reproductive health care services such as contraceptive counseling. Context matters and it may change rapidly.
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spelling pubmed-49941922016-08-23 Using panel data to examine pregnancy attitudes over time Väisänen, Heini Jones, Rachel K. Int J Popul Stud Article There is a lack of research examining changes in women's fertility attitudes over relatively short periods of time. The aim of this study was to determine whether and how women's attempts to get pregnant and their desire to avoid pregnancy changed over six months' time as well as which characteristics and circumstances were associated with these changes. Using multinomial regression, we analyzed two panels of data from a sample of approximately 3,000 U.S. adult women gathered within six months apart. Only 4% of the women were trying to get pregnant at both time points, but six percent went from trying to not or vice versa. Two-thirds reported a strong desire to avoid pregnancy at both points, but 9% transitioned from strong to not strong and an additional 7% transitioned from not strong to strong. Women who transitioned to a more serious romantic relationship were at increased risk of transitioning to trying to become pregnant and, not surprisingly, to a weaker pregnancy avoidance. Some of the variables we tested, including changes in employment status and race/ethnicity, were associated with one outcome but not the other. The results highlight the importance of taking a holistic perspective of women's lives when studying pregnancy intentions and in reproductive health care services such as contraceptive counseling. Context matters and it may change rapidly. 2015 /pmc/articles/PMC4994192/ /pubmed/27563690 Text en http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License (http://creative-commons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/), permitting all noncommercial use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
spellingShingle Article
Väisänen, Heini
Jones, Rachel K.
Using panel data to examine pregnancy attitudes over time
title Using panel data to examine pregnancy attitudes over time
title_full Using panel data to examine pregnancy attitudes over time
title_fullStr Using panel data to examine pregnancy attitudes over time
title_full_unstemmed Using panel data to examine pregnancy attitudes over time
title_short Using panel data to examine pregnancy attitudes over time
title_sort using panel data to examine pregnancy attitudes over time
topic Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4994192/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/27563690
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