Sex and Gender Issues: A Handbook of Tests and Measures

This chapter contains descriptions of 17 scales organized into two sections: contraception and abortion. Eight scales pertain to various aspects of contraception, with some measures dealing with contraception in general and others considering specific forms of contraception. The scales, presented in alphabetical order by title, purport to measure attitudes, behavior, and knowledge. Seven of the eight scales were initially used during the 1980s. Only one scale is older; the Reasons for Not Using Birth Control was first described in the literature in 1970 ( Bauman, 1970). Several types of measures are described here: four summated rating scales, two alternate choice measures, a semantic differential, and a role-play measure. Scale length is quite variable, with the shortest scale, not considering the role-play measure, containing only 8 items and the longest scale containing 66 items. Most of the scales have been used with adolescents, sometimes high school-age adolescents and sometimes college-age adolescents. Several of the measures are appropriate for specific groups, such as females or sexually active persons.

Reliability estimates were provided for seven of the eight scales in this section; most often, the reliability estimates were alpha coefficients. Testretest reliability estimates were available for only one scale: the Contraceptive Knowledge Test ( Reichelt & Werley, 1975). There was some information regarding the validity of six of the eight scales, but the data for two scales were equivocal. None of the measures described in this first section has been used extensively. The Contraceptive Knowledge Test was used more often than the other scales, but still there were only six articles that described research involving the use of the Contraceptive Knowledge Test.

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