Measuring Childbirth Experience Using Persian CEQ 2.0

Birth experience was measured by the Persian version of the Childbirth Experience Questionnaire version 2.0 (CEQ 2.0) (Additional file 1). The questionnaire consists of 23 questions, 20 of which are scored by likert scale (from 1 to 4 points) and 3 questions using the visual scale (from 0 to 100). Subscales of the CEQ 2.0 include own capacity (questions 1, 2, 4, 5, 6, 7, 21 and 22), professional support (questions 11, 13, 14, 15 and 16), participation (questions 8, 9, 10 and 12) and perceived safety (questions 3, 17, 18, 19, 20, and 23). Negative questions were scored in reverse order. The range of total score and subscales is between 1 and 4, and lower scores represent more traumatic experience. Validity and reliability of the Persian version of CEQ 2.0 has been verified with Cronbach’s alpha of 0.94. The psychometric properties of the Farsi version of the CEQ 2.0 will be reported in another paper. The reliability of the original questionnaire was also high among postpartum women (Cronbach’s alpha = 0.93) [26 (link)]. The traumatic birth experience was considered to be less than a standard deviation from the mean score of the population (mean score ≤ 2.50).
Socio-demographic, pregnancy, labour and birth information were collected using a checklist designed by the research team (Additional file 2). The validity of this checklist was confirmed through face and content validity, so that the questionnaire was distributed to ten experts and after collecting feedback from them, required modifications were made on the questionnaire. The questions included three main categores: a) socio-demographic data (age, education level, occupation, duration of marriage, marital satisfaction, household income, insurance status); b) antenatal data (history of abortion, planned pregnancy, attendance in prenatal classes, first source of support, doing exercise during pregnancy); and intrapartum data (gestational age, place of birth, length of stay in the labour room, permission to move or change position during labour, permission to choose the position of childbirth, augmentation, use of pharmacological or non-pharmaceutical methods to reduce pain, episiotomy, presence of companion and doula). For the purpose of the study, exercising during pregnancy was measured by a question with the response options of Yes or No. We asked about the frequency of any type of exercise in a week and the duration of each exercise. Normal walking and jogging were considered exercise.