Abstract
The Wijma Delivery Expectancy/Experience Questionnaire (W-DEQ-A) is an instrument that evaluates fear of childbirth through the expectations of women in relation to childbirth and their experience during the birth. The objective of this study was to translate the W-DEQ-A into Spanish and analyse its reliability and validity. The study was carried out in two phases: (1) adapting the questionnaire to Spanish and (2) a transversal study in a sample of 273 pregnant women in the Sexual and Reproductive Health centres in the Metropolitan Northern Barcelona in Catalonia (Spain). The psychometric properties were analysed in terms of reliability and construct validity. The confirmatory factorial analysis did not confirm the unidimensionality of the original structure of the WDEQ-A, as happened with the other studies in which it has previously been validated. The result of the exploratory factorial analysis suggests four factors, or dimensions, very similar but not identical to those obtained in other analysis studies of the W-DEQ-A. The Cronbach alpha and the omega scale were also adequate for all the scales and for each of the dimensions. The results of this study confirm the findings of other studies that suggest that the W-DEQ-A is multi-dimensional. In the Spanish version of the W-DEQ-A four dimensions have been identified to explore fear of childbirth in pregnant women. The Spanish version of the WDEQ-A (WDEQ-A-Sp) is reliable and valid for the measurement of fear of childbirth in clinical practice and for use in future research.
Highlights
Pregnancy and future childbirth is one of the most important life events in the life of a woman and the experience of birth can be defined as a complex individual life process that incorporates psychological and profound subjective physiological processes [1]
The Wijma Delivery Expectancy/Experience Questionnaire (W-DEQ-A) questionnaire was adapted to Spanish: in the second phase the metrics of the version translated to Spanish were analysed
In our study we initially carried out a confirmatory factorial analysis (CFA) using the generalized least squares method with the aim of determining if the scores reproduced the unidimensional structure on which the original questionnaire is based
Summary
Pregnancy and future childbirth is one of the most important life events in the life of a woman and the experience of birth can be defined as a complex individual life process that incorporates psychological and profound subjective physiological processes [1]. Most women experience feelings of anxiety or worry about the development and wellbeing of the pregnancy, the baby and about the birth throughout the pregnancy [2]. This worry focussed on the birth can set off feelings of anxiety or intense fear [3, 4]. The term tokophobia is used to refer to pathological fear of childbirth [8] and is defined as that which affects or interferes with the everyday life of pregnant women [9, 10]. Consensus does not exist on the definition of fear of childbirth [11], or on the measuring tool to detect it [12], so in the literature it is described as light, moderate or severe [13]
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