Development and Validation of the Birth Environment Assessment Scale

To examine the psychometric properties of the newly developed Birth Environment Assessment Scale (BEAS).

Descriptive psychometric study.

Online survey in the United States distributed from April-May 2024.

Adult women who give birth in the past 5 years (N = 343).

We determined content validity, evaluated internal consistency, and conducted exploratory factor analysis (EFA) and confirmatory factor analysis (CFA). We used the Edinburgh Postnatal Depression Scale, the Postpartum Specific Anxiety Scale Response Short Form -COVID, and the Perceived Stress Scale to evaluate the validity of the BEAS scores. To test for measurement invariance by race, we performed a multigroup analysis.

We identified a two-factor solution through EFA and CFA, and we determined a unidimensional factor structure through item analysis. We found that the BEAS scores correlated with the theoretically relevant psychological variables of postpartum depression, postpartum anxiety, and stress, which demonstrated criterion validity. A multigroup analysis of the BEAS indicated the factor structure was stable across racial groups.

We found evidence to suggest that the BEAS is a valid measure of a woman's perceptions of the birth environment. The BEAS is a new tool that can be used to create supportive, comfortable birth environments.