Development and psychometric testing of the scales for measuring maternal satisfaction in normal and caesarean birth

Objective: to develop a scale to measure maternal satisfaction with birth to evaluate women's experiences in labour and the early postpartum period.

Design: development and psychometric assessment of a multidimensional maternal satisfaction questionnaire.

Setting: maternity unit of a university hospital in Istanbul.

Participants: 500 healthy postpartum women.

Methods: five steps were taken in development of the scale: literature review, generating item pool, content validity testing, administration of draft scale and psychometric testing. Two versions of the scale were developed: the Scale for Measuring Maternal Satisfaction-normal birth and the Scale for Measuring Maternal Satisfaction-caesarean birth. Content validity was evaluated by experts. The appropriate draft scale and the Newcastle Satisfaction with Nursing Scale were administered to postpartum women before hospital discharge.

Findings: content validity index scores for the vaginal and caesarean birth scales were 0.91 and 0.89, respectively. Item-total and subscale-total scores correlated significantly for each scale. Evaluation of construct validity through factor analysis yielded 10 subscales: 'perception of health professionals', 'nursing/midwifery care in labour (in caesarean version: preparation for caesarean)', 'comforting', 'information and involvement in decision making', 'meeting baby', 'postpartum care', 'hospital room', 'hospital facilities', 'respect for privacy' and 'meeting expectations'. Both scales had good internal reliability, with Cronbach's α coefficients of 0.91. The scales established their convergent validity with significant correlations with the Newcastle Satisfaction with Nursing Scale.

Conclusion: the scales are valid and reliable tools for evaluating Turkish women's experiences in labour and the early postpartum period.

Implications for practice: the scales can contribute to the assessment of women's satisfaction with different aspects of care, the quality of care and developments in maternity services.