Original ArticlesInfluence of physician attitudes on willingness to perform abortion
Section snippets
Materials and methods
The study protocol was approved by the institutional review board at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine. The study population for this survey consisted of resident and attending physicians, in the Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine, who practiced in the Bronx. A six-page questionnaire was sent to each physician with a self-addressed, stamped, return envelope. Participants were guaranteed that their responses would remain anonymous. A brief
Results
Of 152 surveys mailed, 82 (53.3%) were returned. Demographic characteristics of the respondents are shown in Table 1. Sixty-five percent of the respondents were male, 82% were white, 90% were attending physicians, and the mean age (± standard deviation) was 47.4 ± 13.8 years.
Median attitude score was 3.8 (interquartile range 3.3–4.3). Table 1 shows that attitudes about abortion were significantly associated with physicians’ religion but not with other demographic factors, such as age, gender,
Discussion
One problem with this study was small sample size, which decreased the statistical power to detect differences. The low response rate might be due to the method of distributing the questionnaire. Mailing was intended to insure anonymity and confidentiality, but abortion is a highly sensitive topic and those polled might have felt uncomfortable answering questions about their attitudes toward it. An anonymous survey was deemed the best method to obtain honest and truthful responses, but reliance
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