Khwepeya Madalitso, Huang Hui-Chuan, Lee Gabrielle T, Kuo Shu-Yu
School of Nursing, College of Nursing, Taipei Medical University, 250 Wuxing Street, Taipei, 11031, Taiwan.
Maternity Department, Machinga District Hospital, Liwonde, Malawi.
BMC Pregnancy Childbirth. 2020 Aug 8;20(1):455. doi: 10.1186/s12884-020-03146-w.
Fear of childbirth is a common health concern for women during pregnancy. The Wijma Delivery Expectancy/Experience Questionnaire (W-DEQ) is widely used to measure childbirth fear during pregnancy. However, this instrument is yet to be validated in Malawi, Africa. Our study aimed to assess the psychometric properties of the W-DEQ questionnaire in Malawi.
Healthy pregnant women in the third trimester (N = 476) at a district hospital in Malawi were included. Fear of childbirth, depressive symptoms, and quality of life were assessed using the W-DEQ, the Edinburg Postnatal Depression Scale, and the World Health Organization Quality of Life scale, respectively. The construct validity, reliability, and convergent validity of the W-DEQ were examined using exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses, Cronbach's alpha, and Pearson correlations.
The mean age of participants was 28.2 (standard deviation = 6.8) years. Exploratory and confirmatory factor analysis of the Malawian version of the W-DEQ indicated a multidimensional structure with three factors: fear, negative appraisal, and a lack of self-efficacy, with acceptable goodness of model fit. The Malawian version of the W-DEQ showed a satisfactory internal consistency (α = 0.84) and was significantly correlated with depressive symptoms (r = 0.23, p < 0.001) and quality of life (r = - 0.17 ~ -0.26, ps < 0.05).
Our findings support the Malawian W-DEQ version being a reliable and valid instrument for measuring childbirth fear in African women.
分娩恐惧是孕期女性常见的健康问题。Wijma分娩预期/体验问卷（W-DEQ）被广泛用于测量孕期的分娩恐惧。然而，该工具在非洲的马拉维尚未得到验证。我们的研究旨在评估W-DEQ问卷在马拉维的心理测量特性。
纳入马拉维一家区级医院的孕晚期健康孕妇（N = 476）。分别使用W-DEQ、爱丁堡产后抑郁量表和世界卫生组织生活质量量表评估分娩恐惧、抑郁症状和生活质量。使用探索性和验证性因素分析、Cronbach's α系数和Pearson相关性检验W-DEQ的结构效度、信度和收敛效度。
参与者的平均年龄为28.2（标准差 = 6.8）岁。对马拉维版W-DEQ进行的探索性和验证性因素分析表明，其具有一个包含恐惧、负面评价和缺乏自我效能感三个因素的多维结构，模型拟合优度可接受。马拉维版W-DEQ显示出令人满意的内部一致性（α = 0.84），并且与抑郁症状（r = 0.23，p < 0.001）和生活质量（r = -0.17 ~ -0.26，ps < 0.05）显著相关。
我们的研究结果支持马拉维版W-DEQ是测量非洲女性分娩恐惧的可靠且有效的工具。
