Assessing Perception of Prenatal Care Quality Among Black Women in the United States

There has been little attention to measuring quality of prenatal care from a Black person's perspective. We examined validity and reliability of the Quality of Prenatal Care Questionnaire (QPCQ) and perceptions of the quality of prenatal care among pregnant Black women.

A total of 190 women had complete data on the postpartum questionnaire containing the QPCQ within 8 weeks after birth. Internal consistency reliability was assessed using Cronbach's α. Construct validity was assessed through hypothesis testing using select questions from the Pregnancy Risk Assessment Monitoring System (PRAMS) and Pearson's r correlation.

The mean (SD) maternal age was 26.5 (5.5) years, and 85.3% of births were term (>37 weeks' 0 days' gestation). The total mean (SD) QPCQ score was 191.3 (27.9) points (range 46-230), and the mean (SD) item score for the subscales ranged from 3.88 (0.80) points to 4.27 (0.64). The Cronbach's α for the overall QPCQ score was .97 and ranged from .72 to .96 for the 6 subscale scores, which indicated acceptable internal consistency reliability. All but one subscale had a Cronbach's α higher than .80. The Approachability subscale had a Cronbach's α of .72. Construct validity demonstrated a moderate and significant positive correlation between the PRAMS items and the QPCQ (r = .273, P < .001).

To our knowledge, this is the first study to examine the validity and reliability of the QPCQ and perceptions of quality of prenatal care among Black women from the United States. The results indicate that participants rate the quality of their prenatal care highly and that the QPCQ is a reliable and valid measure of the quality of prenatal care. Use of a convenient and reliable instrument to measure the quality of prenatal care rather than prenatal care satisfaction or utilization may help to elucidate the factors of prenatal care that are protective specifically among Black women.