Construct and content validity of the Greek version of the Birth Satisfaction Scale (G-BSS)

Background: Birth Satisfaction’ is a term that encompasses a woman’s evaluation of her birth experience. The term includes factors such as her appraisal of the quality of care she received, a personal assessment of how she coped, and her reconstructions of what happened on that particular day. Her accounts may be accurate or skewed, yet correspond with her reality of how events unfolded. Objective: To evaluate properties of an instrument designed to measure birth satisfaction in a Greek population of postnatal women. Study design: We assessed factor structure, internal consistency, divergent validity and known-groups discriminant validity of the 30-item-Greek-Birth-Satisfaction-Scale-Long-Form (30-item-G-BSS-LF) and its revised version the10-item-Greek-BSS-Revised (10-item-G-BSS-R), using survey data collected in Athens. Participants: A convenience sample of healthy Greek postnatal women (n=162) aged 22-46 years who had delivered between 34-42 weeks gestation. Results: The 30-item-G-BSS-LF performed poorly in terms of factor structure. The short-form 10-item-G-BSS-R performed well in terms of measurement replication of the English equivalent version as a multidimensional instrument. The short-form 10-item-G-BSS-R comprises 3 sub-scales which measure distinct but correlated domains of: (1) quality of care provision (4-items), (2) women’s personal attributes (2-items), and (3) stress experienced during labour (4-items). Key conclusions: The 10-item-G-BSS-R is a valid and reliable multi-dimensional psychometric instrument for measuring birth satisfaction in Greek postnatal women