Identifying women at risk of unintended pregnancy: a comparison of two pregnancy readiness measures

Purpose: Recently, there has been interest in developing a predictive measure to assess pregnancy readiness/intention in clinical settings. Two such measures have been created but tested primarily in pregnant or postpartum populations. This study examined agreement between the pregnancy readiness measures in a diverse population of nonpregnant women.

Methods: Women completed short questionnaires while waiting for clinical appointments. Participants' responses to the pregnancy readiness measures were cross-tabulated to assess the level of agreement between the measures. Logistic regression was used to determine factors related to disagreement between the measures. Complete information was available for 220 women.

Results: Almost 55% of women had disagreement between the pregnancy readiness measures. Women with a high school education or less had 2.60 times the odds of disagreement (95% confidence interval 1.23-5.49), and women who did not use contraception had 2.40 times the odds of disagreement (95% confidence interval 1.18-4.87).

Conclusions: Although both pregnancy readiness measures are promising tools that could potentially be adapted for use in public health or clinical settings, there are limitations to these measures. These measures should be further tested and refined through the use of qualitative methods to ensure that a valid measure is created for use in non-pregnant populations.