A questionnaire to assess women's perception of respectful maternity care (WP-RMC): Development and psychometric properties

Abstract Objective To develop and assess the psychometric properties of Women's Perspection-Respectful Maternity Care (WP-RMC) Questionnaire. Design An exploratory sequential mixed method study was carried out from March to August 2018 in Tehran, Iran. The questionaire items were generated from the literature review and qualitatatve study. The revised items of questionnaire were assessed for validity via testing for face, content and construct validity and relibility. Setting Public and semi-public hospitals, and public primary health care centers. Participants Postpartum women who had a low risk pregnancy, normal vaginal childbirth and gave birth to a healthy baby with normal birth weight. Findings The WP-RMC has 19 items that loaded in three factors: Providing comfort, Participatory care and Mistreatment. Exploratory factor analysis jointly accounted for 53.05% of observed variance. The CVI was 0.97 and the CVR in all items was more than 0.79. Cronbach's alpha for all items was 0.91 and ICC was 0.9. Key conclusions 'The WP-RMCquestionnaire is a valid and reliable tool to measure women's experiences of Respectful Maternity Care. This questionnaire could assess subjective features of quality of childbirth care. It can be used in maternity services trying to evaluate and improve women's care experiences during labour and childbirth. The use of the translation of WP-RMC questionnaire in other countries is recommended.