Development of a midwives' emotion scale in second trimester abortion care: verification of reliability and validity

Abstract

Purpose

To develop a “midwives' emotion scale in second-trimester abortion care,” to measure midwives’ emotions and examine its reliability and validity.

Methods

We created a scale based on the literature and previous studies that elucidated the emotions of nurses in abortion care and examined the content as well as face validity. We requested cooperation from 300 medical institutions that handle childbirth in the Tokyo metropolitan area, distributed 511 copies of research cooperation request documents to the midwives working at these facilities, and conducted an online survey. Item and exploratory factor analyses examined reliability and validity. Statistical package for social sciences (SPSS Ver.28) was used for analysis.

Results

A total of 240 valid responses were analyzed. As a result, a scale consisting of 6 subscales and 25 items was completed: factor I (positive perception of care), II (negative feelings towards fetus), III (anger towards women), IV (negative perception of care), V (self-evaluation of care techniques) and VI (frustration with women's surroundings). Cronbach's alpha for the scale was 0.88 and that for the subscales ranged from 0.72–0.83. The correlation coefficient between the total scale score and the total score of the Japanese version of SABAS (stigmatizing attitudes, beliefs, and actions scale) was 0.41. Using the known groups method, the data were classified into groups having negative and positive values for abortion and compared, and it was observed that the total scale score was significantly higher in the group having negative values.

Conclusion

We developed a midwives' emotion scale in second-trimester abortion care and evaluated its reliability as well as construct validity. We believe that this scale can to self-evaluate emotions in second-trimester abortion care and contribute to its improvement.