Trust in Childbirth Scale: a scale development study

Aim: Childbirth is significant for women and their partners as it is an enriching experience for their lives. Feeling of trust and security is a crucial part of a positive birthing experience for women, and that feeling of trust influences mothers' behaviors and decisions during pregnancy, childbirth, and the early postpartum period. This study aimed to development a scale to assess women’s feeling of trust in childbirth at pregnancy or the postpartum period.Methods: This study included 335 pregnant or postpartum women who applied to a state hospital. The adequacy of the sample size was assessed using Kaiser-Meyer-Olkin (KMO) analysis, and the assumption of multivariate normal distribution of the data was evaluated with Bartlett’s test of sphericity. The researchers generated an initial pool of 63 items. The items were assessed for linguistic clarity and comprehensibility. Expert opinions were obtained from seven faculty members. Item, validity and reliability analyses were performed, and the scale was finalized with 17 items.Results: Exploratory factor analysis indicated a single-factor structure for the 17 items scale, explaining 73.668% of the total variance. The Cronbach's alpha coefficient of the scale is 0.976. The scale has a high degree of reliability.Conclusion: Since there is no direct scale to measure feelings of trust during childbirth, a direct comparison is not possible. However, this scale provides insight into the level of trust women experience during childbirth. The scale can be used to measure the feeling of trust during childbirth.