Design and Validation of a Scale to Measure Attitudes towards Abortion Legislation; Application of Explanatory and Confirmatory Factor Analysis

General societal attitudes on induced abortion can influence the health sector policy response towards providing safe abortion services. This study aimed to develop a scale and evaluate the validity and reliability to measure public attitudes towards abortion legislation. An scale was developed by adapting existing scales and finalized with experts’ opinions. An interview schedule was administered among 728 adults residents in Colombo, Sri Lanka. Validity and reliability were tested after performing Explanatory Factor Analysis (EFA) and Confirmatory Factor Analysis (CFA).

The finalized scale contained 8 items and 2 factors named “Attitudes towards soft reasons” and “Attitudes towards hard reasons”. The two factors explained 71% of the total variability. The CFA showed a good model fit. Composite Reliability for the first and second factors were 0.938 and 0.890 respectively. The scale’s internal consistency correlation coefficient was at the acceptable level (Cronbach’s alpha = 0.923 and 0.850, McDonald’s omega = 0.915 and 0.863 for the first and second factors respectively). The Average Variance Extracted of the two factors were 0.792 and 0.671 whereas the Maximum Shared Squared Variance was 0.054. The correlation between the two factors was 0.23.

The scale is proved to have high validity and reliability to measure the public attitudes towards abortion legislation.