Pregnancy literacy scale development study

Pregnancy literacy is a social and cognitive competence that refers to women's ability to correctly acquire, understand, evaluate and apply health information specific to the pregnancy process in daily life, with the aim of improving and maintaining their own health and the health of their children. For the pregnancy literacy scale developed, a draft item pool of 89 questions was created with 12 experts, 12 items with a content validity ratio (CVR) of "0 or negative" were eliminated with the Lawshe technique and language suitability was tested, and the draft scale application phase was started with 77 items. The pilot study was conducted with 100 volunteer pregnant participants, then the main study was conducted with a total of 401 volunteer female participants aged 18 and over. In order to verify the structure of the targeted scale, explanatory and confirmatory factor analysis, item analysis, and reliability analyses were conducted. As a result of the explanatory factor analysis, a 39-item data set with factor loadings between 0.489 and 0.718 and a 4-factor measurement tool with an eigenvalue above 1 were obtained. These factors, which explained 52.78% of the total variance, were named as "Newborn Care and Postpartum, Birth Process and Preparation, Information Seeking and Decision Making Behavior, and Danger Signs in Pregnancy". The fit index values obtained in the confirmatory factor analysis results were found to be sufficient and within acceptable ranges, and the difference between the lower and upper 27% group means was found to be significant, and the item total correlation values were found to be between 0.329 and 0.698. In addition, the Fornell-Larcker criterion, HTMT criterion, CR and AVE parameters for the structural fit of the scale were also within the accepted fit limits. Statistical analyses of the study were conducted using SPSS, AMOS and SMART-PLS programs. As a result, it was determined that the Pregnancy Literacy Scale was a valid and reliable measurement tool.