Abstract
BackgroundDue 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.MethodsFactors 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.ResultsIn 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.ConclusionsThe 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.
Highlights
Due to its potential impact on women’s psychological health, assessing perceptions of their childbirth experience is important
We sent the questionnaire to 477 women between June and December 2014
Seventy-nine per cent of the participants were recruited in Switzerland, and 96% of questionnaires were sent by email
Summary
Due to its potential impact on women’s psychological health, assessing perceptions of their childbirth experience is important. The importance of assessing the childbirth experience is known This significant life event may have an impact on the psychological health of women, including potential benefits or damage [1, 2]. Stevens et al suggested that perceived control could be an important predictor of childbirth experience [17] This variable can influence positively or negatively the perception of this event according to women’s personality. Many studies reported that women with antenatal fear of childbirth may have increased risk of negative experience. This study reported that the concordance of expectations of the women prior to delivery with the childbirth experience is a key factor to improve positive women’s views
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