Cross-Cultural Validation and Psychometric Evaluation of the Birth Beliefs Scale Among Portuguese Pregnant Women.
Marlene Lopes, Teresa Neves, Margarida Vieira and 1 others
PMID 42549695WHAT IT FOUND
A translated Birth Beliefs Scale for Portuguese pregnant women still split birth into natural and medical views, but pain-related items and an item about body structure were dropped.
The medical subscale was less consistent, so use it cautiously.
Key findings
01A forced two-factor solution was theoretically interpretable in the exploratory analysis.
02Item 6 was suggested for removal, and items 2 and 8 were removed because their loadings were low.
03After excluding 2 observations, the final confirmatory model fit improved, but Cronbach's alpha was 0.68 for Natural Process and 0.58 for Medical Process.
STILL TO COME
How it was doneWhat they foundWhat it means for RNs
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What it does not show
The sample was a convenience sample from childbirth preparation programs, 72.6% had not given birth before, and 65.1% held higher education degrees, so results may not apply to other pregnant women. The study was cross-sectional and did not test stability over time, so it cannot say whether birth beliefs predict birth experiences or outcomes. The Medical Process subscale had reliability below the study's 0.70 standard, and convergent validity was below the 0.50 threshold, so its scores are less consistent. Pain-related items were removed, so the scale does not capture beliefs about labor pain.
Declared interests
The authors reported support from the Health Sciences Research Unit: Nursing, hosted by the School of Nursing, University of Coimbra, and funded by the Foundation for Science and Technology (FCT).
The easy way to misread this
Do not read this as evidence that asking about birth beliefs improves birth experiences or reduces unnecessary intervention. The paper tested a questionnaire in 241 pregnant women, not a care programme, and the medical subscale was less reliable.