2.6. Postabortion self-efficacy and coping
The four-item scale on postabortion self-efficacy was
adopted from Major et al. [30]. Items were translated into
Dutch and slightly adapted, since they were assessed after
the abortion and not before. Women rated the extent to
which they were able to “think about children or babies
comfortably”, “spend time around children or babies
comfortably”, “have physical intimacy” and “watch TV
shows or read articles about abortion” (α=.78). Responses
were measured on a scale ranging from 1 (not at all) to 5
(very well). Postabortion coping was measured by two
coping scales of the Dutch shortened version of the Coping
Inventory for Stressful Situations, the CISS-21 [31,32].
Following others [30], we excluded the problem-oriented
coping items scale because strategies such as “taking
corrective action immediately” seemed not conceptually
relevant after an abortion. We adapted the instruction so that
it would measure postabortion coping specifically and not
general coping style: “[…] Please indicate to which extent
you reacted this way after you had the abortion.” Seven
items measured emotion-oriented coping style (α=.79), for
example, “blame myself for having gotten into this
situation”; and seven other items measured avoidanceoriented
coping style (α=.76) for example, “take some time
off and get away from the situation.”