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Development of the Delivery Fear Scale

K Wijma1, S Alehagen, B Wijma

  • 1Division of Obstetrics and Gynaecology, Department of Health and Environment, Faculty of Health Sciences, Linköping University, S-581 85 Linköping, Sweden. klaas.wijma@imk.liu.se

Journal of Psychosomatic Obstetrics and Gynaecology
|August 23, 2002
PubMed

This article reviews the development of the Delivery Fear Scale (DFS) to measure fear during labor and delivery. In an initial study, 92 women in labor answered a list of 60 items, expressing fear-related appraisals and their contrasts that were characteristic of women in labor. The items were then selected by means of an item-total analysis. In a second study, the final list of ten items was tested psychometrically, and a semi-structured interview was performed on 45 women in labor, to explore the women's descriptions of the content of each of the ten items. According to the content analysis of the interviews, the dominating connotation of the ten items is fear based on the appraisal of being captured. The studies show that the DFS is a questionnaire that almost effortlessly can be completed within 60-90 seconds during any moment of labor and delivery. The scale has a good reliability: Cronbach's alpha was 0.88 in both studies.

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