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Teenage pregnancy in a health-insured population: Social bonds of young women who deliver, abort and contracept
Abstract
The theory selected as the potential framework for better explaining teenage pregnancy, among a cohort of health-insured sexually active teens, was Social Bond Theory. With this theoretical framework in mind, eight research questions were generated, with the primary focus of interest in determining the correlation between ten social bond scale scores to outcome status (deliver, abort and contracept). A 50-item survey instrument was developed for purposes of this research utilizing original and existing demographic and social bond questions. The questionnaire was adapted for use with a CATI system of telephone interviewing, pretested and finally administered to a total of 213 teenage respondents. Results from the stepwise multiple regression analysis showed that among the respondents who sustained a pregnancy, significant differences existed between the deliver and abort groups. The deliver group was more highly religious (p =.001) and more likely to have come from a family of lower socioeconomic status (p =.001) than were the respondents from the abort group. When comparing the abort and contracept respondents, the only significant difference was that the abort group was less connected with family than were the contraceptors (p =.02). For all demographic measures and all remaining social bond measures, these two groups of respondents were not significantly different. Lastly, it was determined that the young women most likely to be teenage mothers among the study respondents were those who were less hopeful about the future (p =.005), were less involved in school-related activities (p =.018), were more religious (p =.023) and were more likely to be of non-white racial/ethnic status (p =.015) than those who successfully contracepted.
Subject Area
Public health|Public policy|Womens studies
Recommended Citation
Prows, Susan L, "Teenage pregnancy in a health-insured population: Social bonds of young women who deliver, abort and contracept" (1993). Doctoral Dissertations Available from Proquest. AAI9316707.
https://scholarworks.umass.edu/dissertations/AAI9316707