Crisis, What Crisis? Replicability of the Key Measurement Characteristics of the Australian Version of the Birth Satisfaction Scale—Revised

Abstract

BACKGROUNDBehavioral and medical science is currently in the grip of a “replication crisis,” circumscribed by the failure to replicate a large proportion of key studies and a consequential impact on confidence in the veracity of the scientific method. Given the contemporary nature of the debate it is surprising that the psychometric properties of commonly used outcome measures have not been evaluated in this context, despite the obvious potential for the measurement characteristics of the measures themselves to be a source of error within a study.The current investigation sought to replicate the original validation study of the Australian version of the 10-item Birth Satisfaction Scale—Revised (A-BSS-R) with respect to key psychometric aspects and the issues of replicability.METHODSA replication study of all quantitative aspects of Jefford et al. (2018) with an increased sample size. Participants were a purposive sample of Australian postnatal women (n = 445).RESULTSMost key quantitative aspects of the original validation study were found to be replicable and consistent with Jefford et al. (2018), the A-BSS-R was found to have excellent psychometric properties fundamentally mirroring the measurement characteristics observed previously. However, a small number of instances of nonreplicability were found.CONCLUSIONSThe A-BSS-R is a valid and reliable measure of birth satisfaction. Replicability, at least in part, is influenced by participant group characteristics, statistical power and sample size. More focus is required on the influence of self-report measures themselves on the germane aspects of successful study replication.