Validation of the Women’s Views of Birth Labor Satisfaction Questionnaire (WOMBLSQ4) in the Spanish Population

Abstract

The satisfaction of women with the birth experience has implications for the health and wellness of the women themselves and also of their newborn baby. The objectives of this study were to determine the factor structure of the Women’s Views of Birth Labor Satisfaction Questionnaire (WOMBLSQ4) questionnaire on satisfaction with the attention received during birth delivery in Spanish women and to compare the level of satisfaction of pregnant women during the birth process with that in other studies that validated this instrument. A cross-sectional study using a self-completed questionnaire of 385 Spanish-speaking puerperal women who gave birth in the Public University Hospitals of Granada (Spain) was conducted. An exploratory factor analysis of the WOMBLSQ4 questionnaire was performed to identify the best fit model. Those items that showed commonalities higher than 0.50 were kept in the questionnaire. Using the principal components method, nine factors with eigenvalues greater than one were extracted after merging pain-related factors into a single item. These factors explain 90% of the global variance, indicating the high internal consistency of the full scale. In the model resulting from the WOMBLSQ4 questionnaire, its nine dimensions measure the levels of satisfaction of puerperal women with childbirth care. Average scores somewhat higher than those of the original questionnaire and close to those achieved in the study carried out in Madrid (Spain) were obtained. In clinical practice, this scale may be relevant for measuring the levels of satisfaction during childbirth of Spanish-speaking women.