Abstract

Background and Aim: Childbirth is one of the important events in women's life, and labor support is an important tissue, because the experience of giving birth may have a positive or negative impact on the women. Considering lack of a suitable questionnaire for measuring labor support behaviors, the present study aimed to translate and evaluate the validity and reliability of the Persian version of the labor support questionnaire. Materials and Methods: This descriptive cross-sectional study included 213 midwives in maternity hospitals of selected medical universities in Tehran from January 2017 to September 2017. Midwives were requested to complete demographic and also labor support questionnaires. At first, we assessed the face and content validity of the instrument qualitatively, and then its construct validity was carried out by confirmatory factor analysis. In order to evaluate the reliability of the instrument, internal consistency and test-retest were used . Results: Qualitative face and content validity of the Persian version of the labor support questionnaire were approved. Also, the construct validity of the questionnaire was confirmed by confirmatory factor analysis. Cronbach's alpha coefficient was 0.96 and the Pearson correlation coefficient of the t-test was 0.71, which were indicative of appropriate reliability of the Persian version of the questionnaire. Conclusion: The findings of this study showed that the Persian version of the labor support questionnaire had the necessary validity and reliability. Therefore, this questionnaire can be used as an appropriate instrument for Iranian midwives. © 2018 the Author (s).