FACTORS PREDICTING CHILDBIRTH SELF-EFFICACY AMONG LOW-RISK PARTURIENTS DURING LATENT PHASE OF LABOR

Abstract

Childbirth self-efficacy (CBSE) is a vital psychological characteristic for parturients to cope with natural vaginal labor and acquire childbirth satisfaction. Understanding the predictors of CBSE is important for both nurse-midwives and parturients. The purposes of the study were to describe CBSE and to identify factors explaining CBSE including parity, childbirth knowledge, birth companion, professional support, and fear of childbirth among Chinese low-risk parturients. A convenient sampling method was used to recruit 122 parturients from the labor room in the first affiliated hospital of Wenzhou medical university, China. Five instruments were used for data collection, including demographic and obstetrical questionnaire, childbirth knowledge questionnaire, professional support questionnaire, childbirth attitude questionnaire, and the 32-item childbirth self-efficacy inventory, which yielded reliability of 0.702, 0.802, 0.884, and 0.945, respectively. Data were analyzed by descriptive statistics, Pearson product-moment correlation, Spearman’s Rho, and Standard multiple linear regression analysis.

The results of this study showed the mean score of CBSE was 225.89 (SD = 47.86) out of 320, which showed maternal CBSE at a relative lower edge of high level. Only three factors combined could explain 30.3% of variance in CBSE, which were professional support (β = .366, p < .001), childbirth knowledge (β = .236, p < .01), and parity (β = .166, p < .05) respectively.

The findings highlighted the significant evidence for future interventions that could focus on these explaining factors to enhance CBSE among low-risk parturients.

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