Development of an exercise attitude scale in Turkish for pregnant women: validity and reliability

Psychometric characteristics of the Chinese version of the Pregnancy Exercise Attitudes Scale (C-PEAS)

BACKGROUND

Reasonable instruction and promotion of appropriate exercise are crucial to improving the exercise status of pregnant women and safeguarding the health of both mother and fetus. However, there is a lack of validated Pregnancy Exercise Attitude Scales with a complete evaluation system in China. This study aims to assess the validity and reliability of the Pregnancy Exercise Attitude Scale (C-PEAS) in Chinese to give medical professionals a reference for carrying out pregnancy care services and promoting the health of the mother and fetus.

METHODS

In this study, the scale was translated, back-translated, and cross-culturally adapted using the Brislin translation model to form the C-PEAS. 528 pregnant women were conveniently selected for the questionnaire survey to evaluate the scale's reliability. The scale's content validity was assessed by the content validity index, while its structural validity was investigated using exploratory factor analysis (EFA) and confirmatory factor analysis (CFA). Cronbach's alpha coefficient, McDonald's omega coefficient, split-half reliability, and retest reliability were used to evaluate the scale's internal consistency.

RESULTS

The C-PEAS contains two dimensions with 37 entries. The EFA supports a two-factor structure with a cumulative variance contribution of 62.927%. The CFA model was well fitted (χ2/df = 1.597, RMSEA = 0.048, IFI = 0.955, TLI = 0.952, and CFI = 0.955). The C- PEAS' Cronbach's alpha coefficient was 0.973, and the range of Cronbach's alpha values for the dimensions was 0.976, 0.944. McDonald's omega coefficient was 0.971, the half-point reliability of the scale was 0.856, and the retest reliability was 0.966.

CONCLUSIONS

The Chinese version of C-PEAS has good psychometric properties. It can be used as an effective measurement tool to evaluate the attitude of pregnant women to exercise during pregnancy.

Determination of exercise attitudes of women of reproductive age in pregnancy

Objective

This study was conducted to evaluate the exercise attitudes of women of reproductive age during pregnancy.

Method

The descriptive study was conducted with 326 women who applied to the gynecology outpatient clinics of a state hospital between September and November 2023. Data were collected with the "Personal Information Form" and "Exercise Attitudes in Pregnant Women Scale". Statistical analyses were analyzed at p < .05 significance level with the independent samples t test method.

Results

Most of the participants (85.6%) stated that they did not know the benefits of exercise during pregnancy and did not exercise during pregnancy (89.6%). The mean exercise attitude scale score of the participants was 135.42 ± 25.90. A significant difference was found between the participants' education level, exercising outside pregnancy, attending a pregnancy school, knowing the benefits of exercise during pregnancy and exercising during pregnancy and all sub-dimension scores (p < .05).

Conclusion

In the study, it was observed that the participants had positive attitudes towards exercise during pregnancy, although their knowledge and behaviors were insufficient. Women's attitudes towards exercise should be determined by health professionals and women's positive attitudes, knowledge and behaviors should be improved by organizing trainings and exercise programs starting from pre-pregnancy.