Prenatal diagnosis of Down's syndrome: a method for measuring the consistency of women's decisions.
A method was developed for judging the quality of womens' decision making in the field of prenatal diagnosis by measuring the internal consistency of their replies to a series of hypothetical decisions. Seventy-three nonpregnant women were interviewed using a lottery technique to elicit the risks of the birth of a Down's child at which they would request the two main procedures for prenatal diagnosis, amniocentesis and chorionic villus biopsy (CVB). The consistency of their replies was tested by performing a third lottery to elicit at what CVB-related abortion risk the subject would choose CVB in preference to amniocentesis. Almost half the subjects were inconsistent, in that their difference level on this third lottery differed by a factor of two or more from that expected from the first two lotteries.
Thornton
J G
JG
Department of Obstetrics and Gynaecology, St. James's University Hospital, Leeds, England.
Lilford
R J
RJ
D000649:Amniocentesis; D015193:Chorionic Villi Sampling; D003657:Decision Making; D004314:Down Syndrome / Q000175:diagnosis*; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D010358:Patient Participation; D011247:Pregnancy; D015203:Reproducibility of Results; D018570:Risk Assessment; D012945:Social Values