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Quality of prenatal care questionnaire: psychometric testing in an Australia population

BACKGROUND: The quality of antenatal care is recognized as critical to the effectiveness of care in optimizing maternal and child health outcomes. However, research has been hindered by the lack of a theoretically-grounded and psychometrically sound instrument to assess the quality of antenatal care...

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Autores principales: Sword, Wendy, Heaman, Maureen, Biro, Mary Anne, Homer, Caroline, Yelland, Jane, Akhtar-Danesh, Noori, Bradford-Janke, Amanda
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: BioMed Central 2015
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4566370/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/26357847
http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s12884-015-0644-7
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author Sword, Wendy
Heaman, Maureen
Biro, Mary Anne
Homer, Caroline
Yelland, Jane
Akhtar-Danesh, Noori
Bradford-Janke, Amanda
author_facet Sword, Wendy
Heaman, Maureen
Biro, Mary Anne
Homer, Caroline
Yelland, Jane
Akhtar-Danesh, Noori
Bradford-Janke, Amanda
author_sort Sword, Wendy
collection PubMed
description BACKGROUND: The quality of antenatal care is recognized as critical to the effectiveness of care in optimizing maternal and child health outcomes. However, research has been hindered by the lack of a theoretically-grounded and psychometrically sound instrument to assess the quality of antenatal care. In response to this need, the 46-item Quality of Prenatal Care Questionnaire (QPCQ) was developed and tested in a Canadian context. The objective of this study was to validate the QPCQ and to establish its internal consistency reliability in an Australian population. METHODS: Study participants were recruited from two public maternity services in two Australian states: Monash Health, Victoria and Wollongong Hospital, New South Wales. Women were eligible to participate if they had given birth to a single live infant, were 18 years or older, had at least three antenatal visits during the pregnancy, and could speak, read and write English. Study questionnaires were completed in hospital. A confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) was conducted. Construct validity, including convergent validity, was further assessed against existing questionnaires: the Patient Expectations and Satisfaction with Prenatal Care (PESPC) and the Prenatal Interpersonal Processes of Care (PIPC). Internal consistency reliability of the QPCQ and each of its six subscales was assessed using Cronbach’s alpha. RESULTS: Two hundred and ninety-nine women participated in the study. CFA verified and confirmed the six factors (subscales) of the QPCQ. A hypothesis-testing approach and an assessment of convergent validity further supported construct validity of the instrument. The QPCQ had acceptable internal consistency reliability (Cronbach’s alpha = 0.97), as did each of the six factors (Cronbach’s alpha = 0.74 to 0.95). CONCLUSIONS: The QPCQ is a valid and reliable self-report measure of antenatal care quality. This instrument fills a scientific gap and can be used in research to examine relationships between the quality of antenatal care and outcomes of interest, and to examine variations in antenatal care quality. It also will be useful in quality assurance and improvement initiatives.
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spelling pubmed-45663702015-09-12 Quality of prenatal care questionnaire: psychometric testing in an Australia population Sword, Wendy Heaman, Maureen Biro, Mary Anne Homer, Caroline Yelland, Jane Akhtar-Danesh, Noori Bradford-Janke, Amanda BMC Pregnancy Childbirth Research Article BACKGROUND: The quality of antenatal care is recognized as critical to the effectiveness of care in optimizing maternal and child health outcomes. However, research has been hindered by the lack of a theoretically-grounded and psychometrically sound instrument to assess the quality of antenatal care. In response to this need, the 46-item Quality of Prenatal Care Questionnaire (QPCQ) was developed and tested in a Canadian context. The objective of this study was to validate the QPCQ and to establish its internal consistency reliability in an Australian population. METHODS: Study participants were recruited from two public maternity services in two Australian states: Monash Health, Victoria and Wollongong Hospital, New South Wales. Women were eligible to participate if they had given birth to a single live infant, were 18 years or older, had at least three antenatal visits during the pregnancy, and could speak, read and write English. Study questionnaires were completed in hospital. A confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) was conducted. Construct validity, including convergent validity, was further assessed against existing questionnaires: the Patient Expectations and Satisfaction with Prenatal Care (PESPC) and the Prenatal Interpersonal Processes of Care (PIPC). Internal consistency reliability of the QPCQ and each of its six subscales was assessed using Cronbach’s alpha. RESULTS: Two hundred and ninety-nine women participated in the study. CFA verified and confirmed the six factors (subscales) of the QPCQ. A hypothesis-testing approach and an assessment of convergent validity further supported construct validity of the instrument. The QPCQ had acceptable internal consistency reliability (Cronbach’s alpha = 0.97), as did each of the six factors (Cronbach’s alpha = 0.74 to 0.95). CONCLUSIONS: The QPCQ is a valid and reliable self-report measure of antenatal care quality. This instrument fills a scientific gap and can be used in research to examine relationships between the quality of antenatal care and outcomes of interest, and to examine variations in antenatal care quality. It also will be useful in quality assurance and improvement initiatives. BioMed Central 2015-09-10 /pmc/articles/PMC4566370/ /pubmed/26357847 http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s12884-015-0644-7 Text en © Sword et al. 2015 Open AccessThis article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver (http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated.
spellingShingle Research Article
Sword, Wendy
Heaman, Maureen
Biro, Mary Anne
Homer, Caroline
Yelland, Jane
Akhtar-Danesh, Noori
Bradford-Janke, Amanda
Quality of prenatal care questionnaire: psychometric testing in an Australia population
title Quality of prenatal care questionnaire: psychometric testing in an Australia population
title_full Quality of prenatal care questionnaire: psychometric testing in an Australia population
title_fullStr Quality of prenatal care questionnaire: psychometric testing in an Australia population
title_full_unstemmed Quality of prenatal care questionnaire: psychometric testing in an Australia population
title_short Quality of prenatal care questionnaire: psychometric testing in an Australia population
title_sort quality of prenatal care questionnaire: psychometric testing in an australia population
topic Research Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4566370/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/26357847
http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s12884-015-0644-7
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