Abstract

Background: Pregnancy can be troublesome for parents. This study was conducted with the aim of development and psychometric evaluation of a Fathers' Concerns Questionnaire regarding low risk pregnancy of their wives. Materials and Methods: This study was an exploratory sequential mixed method research. The participants were men whose wives visited Healthcare centers of Gorgan (Iran) for pregnancy care. In the qualitative stage, the individual experiences of 20 fathers were inquired by direct content analysis using semi-structured interview and questionnaire items were compiled based on findings of the qualitative study. The validity of the tool was confirmed by face, content and construct validity methods using exploratory and confirmatory factor analysis. The reliability was investigated by internal consistency methods using Cronbach's alpha and stability was determined by intraclass correlation coefficient (ICC) test-retest with an interval of 2 weeks. Results: In the qualitative study, 28 initial items of the questionnaire were compiled in three dimensions, including the process of pregnancy and delivery (10 items), mother and child health (4 items), and individual-family concerns (14 items). In the face and content validity stage, 2 items were removed. Barlett's test was significant (p=0.000) and Kaiser-Meyer-Olkin was equal to 0.88. Based on factor analysis results, 2 other items were omitted. The extracted factors were investigated by confirmatory factor analysis. Total reliability was determined by Cronbach's alpha (0.93), and ICC (0.99). Conclusion: Fathers' concerns questionnaire for low risk pregnancy of wives is designed with 24 items and 3 dimensions, which has appropriate validity and reliability and can be used to determine the status of fathers' concerns and the effectiveness of counseling interventions to reduce concerns during low risk pregnancy of their wives.