Development, validation, and implementation of a novel measure to assess abortion misinformation acceptance and estimate national prevalence among US adults
Abortion
Awarded 2024
Emerging Scholars in Family Planning
Hayley McMahon, MSPH
Emory University
$7,500

Hayley V. McMahon, MSPH, CPH (she/her) is a Ph.D. student in the Department of Behavioral, Social, and Health Education Sciences at Emory University’s Rollins School of Public Health and a Doctoral Fellow at the Center for Reproductive Health Research in the Southeast (RISE). A proud first-generation scholar from southern Appalachia, Hayley holds an MSPH in Health Education and Health Communications from Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health and a bachelor’s degree in Cultural Anthropology from Duke University. In addition to her role as a community-engaged researcher, she also currently serves on the board of Holler Health Justice and volunteers as a clinic escort with an independent abortion and reproductive justice community clinic in Georgia. Much of Hayley’s research and advocacy focuses on abortion misinformation, which refers to false information about abortion that is unknowingly spread through social networks. A small body of existing literature suggests that abortion misinformation is an urgent and far-reaching threat to public health, one that is entangled with abortion stigma, anti-abortion policies, hesitancies to seek care, and, for many, an inability to access abortion care. Despite this, the lack of validated measures to assess the acceptance of abortion misinformation has substantially limited the progress of research on this topic. Therefore, this research aims to develop, implement, and validate a novel scale to assess abortion misinformation acceptance and estimate its prevalence among U.S. adults.