Psychometric Properties of Persian Version of Prenatal Health Behaviors

Health behaviors, includes physical activity, nutrition, spiritual growth, responsibility, interpersonal relationships, and stress management. Since there is no specific tool for measuring the health behaviors of Iranian pregnant women, this study was conducted for the first time in the Iranian population in order to psychoanalyze the Persian scale of prenatal health behaviors scale.

This cross-sectional psychometric study was performed on 200 pregnant women in Babol and Amol pregnancy clinics by available sampling method. During the pregnancy care visit, women with a gestational age of 14 weeks or more completed demographic questionnaires and pregnancy health behaviors with a score range of 0-48. Scale psychometrics were performed using Cronbach s alpha and internal consistency obtained from retesting, exploratory and confirmatory factor analysis and with Amos software.

The mean health-promoting behaviors of pregnant women were 24.8±5.5 and destructive health behaviors were 23.7±14.2. The results of factor analysis showed that this scale in Iranian pregnant women has four domains of behavioral habits / destructive health nutrition, behavioral habits / health promoting nutrition, physical health promoting activities, destructive physical health habits with explained variance of 65.13%. Intra-cluster correlation index in all four areas of the questionnaire and also the total score of the test was above 0.9, which confirms the repeatability of this test.

According to the results of this study, the Persian scale of pregnancy health behaviors has a validity and reliability to assess the health and destructive behaviors of pregnant women in Iranian society and can be used in clinical and research situations.