Secular trends in abortion attitudes: 1975-1980-1985

In this study, we compared the attitudes toward abortion of respondents from the National Opinion Research Center's (NORC) General Social Survey (GSS) for the years 1975, 1980, and 1985. The major theme of the GSS is that an adequate description of changes in abortion attitudes is predicted on resolving the question of whether the six abortion items used in the surveys measure one or two dimensions. We used the Mokken method of scale analysis, a stochastic extension of Guttman scaling, to resolve this question. We concluded that the six items are unidimensional and, therefore, create a single scale to measure the changes in abortion attitudes across the three periods. The data revealed virtually no change from 1975 to 1980, but a significant, though small, drop in approval from 1980 to 1985.