Linguistic and Cultural Adaptation and Validation of the Instrument for Measuring Perceptions of Obstetric Violence

Introduction: Obstetric violence has recently been recognized in Ecuador as a type of gender-based violence against women during pregnancy, childbirth, or the postpartum period, affecting mothers, their children, families, and society in general. This study was conducted to justify the importance of including the topic of obstetric violence prevention in the training of health professionals in Ecuador. Objective: To linguistically and culturally adapt and validate the Perception of Obstetric Violence in Health Science Students (PercOV-S) instrument. Materials and Method: Methodological study of the adaptation of the instrument created in Spain, developed with the stages of linguistic review by the linguist, content review by eight key informants/experts and two students, and psychometric validation of data collected from 269 students. Results: After the changes, the original instrument retained the same number of items as the PercOV-S instrument, with 20 items of sociodemographic data and 33 items on the perception of obstetric violence, named PercOV-S-A. To validate the pilot test data, confirmatory factor analysis was performed, which explained 52.6% of the variance in three factors or domains: 1) Insensitive and cruel treatment; 2) Normalized violence; and 3) Neglect and manipulation. All factor loadings were greater than 0.42, except for two items. The internal reliability of the questionnaire, by domain, was greater than or equal to 95%. The overall score (3.42) on the PercOV-S-A scale, as well as the scores for the domains (3.53), (2.77), and (3.36), indicated a high perception of obstetric violence. Conclusions: The PercOV-S-A instrument is fully functional for its purpose, after being adapted and validated for the Ecuadorian context.