Developing and Pretesting a Survey About Immigrant Women's Experiences With Postpartum Depression Screening

To develop a survey about immigrant women's experiences with and reasons for seeking postpartum depression (PPD) screening, to assess content validity of the survey, and to evaluate the cultural and linguistic appropriateness and acceptability for immigrant women of the survey.

Guided by the Theory of Care-Seeking Behavior, this three-phase descriptive study involved survey development, pretesting, and revisions.

A Midwestern university town.

A total of 9 experts rated content validity, and 12 participants who were Chinese immigrant women provided feedback on the survey.

Experts rated items on relevance. Participants provided feedback through cognitive interviews. We revised items on the basis of experts' ratings and participants' feedback.

The average content validity index score for items was .88. Participants suggested the following improvements: editing items for use of more common terms, reducing the number and length of items, revising the flow of the survey, reformatting some questions, and clarifying items to yield desired information. Participants' spontaneous comments affirmed the importance of studying PPD among immigrant women.

Findings about validity, acceptability, and cultural and linguistic appropriateness informed our revisions of a new survey about immigrant women's experiences with and reasons for seeking or not seeking PPD screening.