Ontology highlight
ABSTRACT: Background
Due to its potential impact on women's psychological health, assessing perceptions of their childbirth experience is important. The aim of this study was to develop a multidimensional self-reporting questionnaire to evaluate the childbirth experience.Methods
Factors influencing the childbirth experience were identified from a literature review and the results of a previous qualitative study. A total of 25 items were combined from existing instruments or were created de novo. A draft version was pilot tested for face validity with 30 women and submitted for evaluation of its construct validity to 477 primiparous women at one-month post-partum. The recruitment took place in two obstetric clinics from Swiss and French university hospitals. To evaluate the content validity, we compared item responses to general childbirth experience assessments on a numeric, 0 to 10 rating scale. We dichotomized two group assessment scores: "0 to 7" and "8 to 10". We performed an exploratory factor analysis to identify underlying dimensions.Results
In total, 291 women completed the questionnaire (response rate = 61%). The responses to 22 items were statistically significant between the 0 to 7 and 8 to 10 groups for the general childbirth experience assessments. An exploratory factor analysis yielded four sub-scales, which were labelled "relationship with staff" (4 items), "emotional status" (3 items), "first moments with the new born," (3 items) and "feelings at one month postpartum" (3 items). All 4 scales had satisfactory internal consistency levels (alpha coefficients from 0.70 to 0.85). The full 25-item version can be used to analyse each item by itself, and the short 4-dimension version can be scored to summarize the general assessment of the childbirth experience.Conclusions
The Questionnaire for Assessing the Childbirth Experience (QACE) could be useful as a screening instrument to identify women with negative childbirth experiences. It can be used as both a research instrument in its short version and a questionnaire for use in clinical practice in its full version.
SUBMITTER: Carquillat P
PROVIDER: S-EPMC5577741 | biostudies-literature | 2017 Aug
REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature
Carquillat Pierre P Vendittelli Françoise F Perneger Thomas T Guittier Marie-Julia MJ
BMC pregnancy and childbirth 20170830 1
<h4>Background</h4>Due to its potential impact on women's psychological health, assessing perceptions of their childbirth experience is important. The aim of this study was to develop a multidimensional self-reporting questionnaire to evaluate the childbirth experience.<h4>Methods</h4>Factors influencing the childbirth experience were identified from a literature review and the results of a previous qualitative study. A total of 25 items were combined from existing instruments or were created de ...[more]