I created a survey about Planned Parenthood and how people view the recent media events pertaining to the services that Planned Parenthood provides. I found this topic interesting to survey because I had an internship over the summer with Planned Parenthood and I feel that the recent media events are something that have been a hot button issue within politics or religion.

While creating the survey I tried to vary the order of the answers and tried to keep the questions as un-biased as I possibly could. However, I am sure that there is possible bias in the way I worded my questions or the questions I asked which led participants to answer the questions in a certain way. It was difficult to think of a different way to have asked the questions so that the questions asked, the answers, the order in which the answers appeared and the question variety would not sway people towards any answer or way of thinking.

I did find that my responders were predominantly liberal minded as I distributed this survey to college age students with a few adults as outliers, the students who participated in the survey were primarily students at the State University of New York at Oneonta, in the age range of eighteen to twenty two, and people that I consider friends or acquaintances of mine as I received the majority of my participants from my Facebook friends list. This, as well, led to some bias in my answers. However, for the small scope of people that I was able to receive answers from, there was still some variety in the responses of the participants. I left some questions open ended or provided a section with fill-in sections to answers like “Why do you feel this way?” or “What care have you received from Planned Parenthood?” to try to further gauge why the participant was answering a certain way and what led them to have the beliefs they did about Planned Parenthood. I thought that leaving the questions open ended would help Planned Parenthood potentially see where the media events have left the opinions of people they help. I know from my experience with Planned Parenthood that education is incredibly important and I felt that this survey would potentially allow for growth of education to combat the negativity within the media.

Here are the survey questions and percentage results:

Question 1: Would you consider yourself to be Pro-Life or Pro-Choice?

A.Pro-Life

B.Pro-Choice

C.Undecided

83% responded Pro-Life, 15% responded Pro-Choice, 2% responded Undecided.

Question 2: Based on your answer to Question 1, is there a specific reason for your choice?

*This was a fill in question

Predominantly, the Pro-Choice people chose Pro-Choice because they believe it is their body and their choice and the Pro-Life people chose Pro-Life because of their religious beliefs or that they believe every life has a chance.

Question 3: There has been a lot of recent coverage of Planned Parenthood in the media over the past few months. How familiar are you with the recent events and their controversy?

31% answered Very Familiar, 55% answered Somewhat, 11% answered Familiar Vaguely and 3% answered Unfamiliar.

Question 4: If you identified as Pro-Choice, have these events changed your opinion on Planned Parenthood?

A.Yes

B.No

C.N/A

6.12% answered yes, 75.51% answered no, 18.37% N/A

When asked why, the responses were generally that they thought the coverage was unfair.

Question 5: If you identified as Pro-Life, have these events changed your opinion on Planned Parenthood? 

A.Yes

B.No

C.N/A

6.74% answered yes, 12.36% answered no, and 80.90% answered N/A

When asked why, the answers were generally that PP offered services they never knew about but also that that the videos and hearing people talking about “harvesting” dead baby parts made them change their opinion.

Question 6: If you identified as Undecided, did the recent media events cause you to lean more towards a certain viewpoint? 

0% answered Pro-Life, 1.64% answered Somewhat Pro-Life, 3.28% answered Still Undecided, 1.64% answeredSomewhat Pro-Choice, 4.92% answered Pro-Choice, and 88.52% said N/A.

Question 7: Based on the media coverage you have seen about Planned Parenthood, do you believe the media has accurately portrayed the events depicted?

A.Yes

B.No

C.Unfamiliar with the media coverage

11% answered yes, 61% answered no, 28% answered unfamiliar with the media coverage.

Question 8: Have you ever received healthcare from Planned Parenthood?

A.Yes

B.No

21% answered yes, 79% answered no.

When asked what kind of healthcare they had received from Planned Parenthood it was generally birth control or regular checkups (pap smears, UTI treatments, etc.)

Question 9: If you have received healthcare from Planned Parenthood before these media events, would you still receive healthcare from them now? 

A.Yes

B.No

C.Have not received healthcare from Planned Parenthood but would

D.Have not received healthcare from Planned Parenthood and still would not

22.68% answered yes, 3.09% answered no, 59.79% answered have not but would, 14.43% answered have not and would not.

Question 10: Finally, based on your knowledge as of taking this survey, what percentage of Planned Parenthood’s services do you believe provide abortions? 

*This was a fill in question

Answers were as follows: 1%, less than 10%, 3%, 20%, 5%, 10%, 10%, 2%, 5%, 10%, 3%, less than 5%, 12%, 3%, 75%, around 10%, 20%, 50%, the largest percent of their profits is abortions, 10%, 3%, 10%, somewhere around 5%, 5%, 2%, 20%, 5%, 30%, 15%, less than 10%, 2%, 90%, 15%, 10-15%, unknown, 5%, a very small percent, 3%, 5%, 10%, 20%, 95-98%, 1%, 40%, 1%, 80%, 5%, less than 10%, about 3%, I heard is was below 10% but before I would assume like 85%, 70%, around half, less than 5%, 3%, 50%, 40%, 5% etc.

(I did nottype all the answers as they predominantly remained between 1-10%, I noted all the answers that were higher than 10%.)