Abortion Knowledge and Attitudes: KFF Polling and Policy Insights

This Kaiser Family Foundation survey is based on interviews with a nationally representative probability-based sample of 1,215 adults ages 18 and over, living in the United States, including an oversample of women between the ages of 18-49. Interviews were administered online and by telephone from December 20-30^th, 2019 in English and Spanish. KFF paid for all costs associated with this survey.

The poll was designed and analyzed by public opinion researchers at the Kaiser Family Foundation (KFF). The sample was recruited using the SSRS Opinion Panel (n=1,100) as well as a subsample of respondents who had previously completed an interview via random digit dialing (RDD) on the SSRS Omnibus (n=115). For both methods of recruitment, the sample was provided by Marketing Systems Groups (MSG) of Horsham, PA.

The SSRS Opinion Panel is a representative probability-based panel of adults ages 18 and over living in the United States, and is recruited using the SSRS Omnibus poll and through address-based sampling (ABS). To efficiently obtain a sample of Spanish language interviews as well as non-internet adults, additional interviews were conducted using computer assisted telephone interviewing (CATI) by landline (n=63) and cell phone (n=52). Non-internet adults (n=100) are those who had previously completed interviews on the SSRS Omnibus and had indicated they did not have internet access. Their status as non-internet users was confirmed at the start of their interview. To ensure the representation of Spanish-speaking respondents, 15 additional interviews were completed by CATI with respondents who had previously completed interviews in Spanish on the SSRS Omnibus, and were not part of the Opinion Panel or the Non-Internet sample.

To meet this study’s analytical goals, SSRS disproportionally invited SSRS Opinion Panel respondents who were women between the ages of 18 and 49 to participate in the study. The total sample (n=351) for this group of women, 18-49, includes 344 online panel respondents and 7 interviews conducted using RDD.

The combined web, landline, and cell phone sample was weighted to match the sample demographics to estimates for the national population. In order to take into account the oversampling of women 18 to 49 years old, men and women first were separately weighted to estimates on age, education, race, Hispanic origin, and region, using data from the Census Bureau’s 2019 Current Population Survey (CPS) data. The male and female samples were then combined and a final weighting adjustment was made including estimates for civic engagement (from the September 2017 CPS data), internet access (internet or no internet, from the 2017 American Community Survey (ACS)), and education (from the 2019 CPS data).

The margin of sampling error including the design effect for the full sample is plus or minus 3 percentage points. Numbers of respondents and margins of sampling error for key subgroups are shown in the table below. For results based on other subgroups, the margin of sampling error may be higher. Sample sizes and margins of sampling error for other subgroups are available by request. Note that sampling error is only one of many potential sources of error in this or any other public opinion poll. Kaiser Family Foundation public opinion and survey research is a charter member of the Transparency Initiative of the American Association for Public Opinion Research.