Belief in prayer in pregnant women

People facing crises situations tend to rely on the spiritual and religious backgrounds. Prayer is an important strategy for reducing tension, stress and anxiety and enables persons to adapt with difficult circumstances. Pregnancy and giving birth are stressful situations. The aim of this study is to investigate belief in prayer during pregnancy. This is a descriptive study carried out on 400 pregnant women hospitalized in Sabzevar Mobini hospital. Inclusion criteria were first pregnancy, term, alive and being literate. Data was collected using a religious believes questionnaire which consist of 65 questions. This Questionnaire consists of three groups of questions related to prayer activities, prayer experiences and attitudes towards prayer. The validity and reliability of religious believes questionnaire was examined using content validity and alfa-kronbakh test respectively. Data was analyzed using spss software and statistical tests such as ANOVA, Pearson correlation and descriptive statistics. Women achieved 84.7% of total score of attitude towards prayer, 70% of total score of experience of prayer and 73% of total score of prayer activities and the overall score was 77%. There was a significant relationship between women age and prayer activities (p<0.008), women age and education and experience of prayer (p<0.04) and women education and attitude towards prayer (p<0.001). Among pregnant women prayer is a common method to cope with stressful situation of pregnancy and delivery.