Development of an instrument to measure attitudes toward the personal use of premarital contraception.

Objective measurement and understanding of contraceptive attitudes is necessary to provide support for the routine approach of educational programs as the solution to the problem of unwanted pregnancy. An attitude instrument measure consisting of 25 homogeneous statements was developed to collectively measure the degree of favorableness or unfavor ableness toward the personal use of contraception during premarital sexual intercourse. The design of the study included determination of reliability and validity for the attitude instrument. The Likert method of summated ratings was selected as the technique for measuring premarital contraceptive attitudes. Statements for the instrument were first obtained by requesting single men and women students enrolled in Pennsylvania State University required health classes to respond in a paragraph or 2 to the question "How do you feel about the use of contraception during premarital sexual relations." Analysis of the 25 items on the same subjects responses resulted in a Coefficient Alpha index of reliability of .920 and an estimated average inter-item correlation of .315. The instrument was also administered to 114 single men and women high school students enrolled in 11th grade health classes. The Coefficient Alpha index of reliability was .908 and the estimated average inter-item correlation was .282. A 3rd administration of the attitude instrument was to 42 single undergraduate women students who were using the Pennsylvania State University Ritenour Health Center for the purpose of obtaining contraception. The Coefficient Alpha index of reliability was .907 and the estimated average inter-item correlation was .282. Based on the findings it is concluded that the Preparmital Contraceptive Attitude Evaluation instrument developed in the study has a high level of reliability and a demonstrated degree of validity. There was a statistically significant difference in the Premarital Contraceptive Attitude scores for the 3 study groups. An examination of the mean attitude scores indicated that the attitude score for the high school students is lower than the group of 433 university students. The clinic group had the highest mean attitude score. The development of this instrument demonstrated that contraceptive attitudes can be effectively measured.