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. As a result of the explanatory factor analysis, a 4-factor structure with 39 items was obtained and named as "Newborn Care and Postpartum, Birth Process and Preparation, Information Search and Decision Making Behavior and Danger Signs in Pregnancy". After the confirmatory factor analysis, the fit index values were in the sufficient and acceptable range, the difference between the lower and upper 27% group means was significant and the item total correlations were found between 0.329 and 0.698. In addition, the Fornell-Larcker criterion, HTMT criterion, CR and AVE parameters were also within the accepted fit limits. As a result, it was determined that the Pregnancy Literacy Scale was a valid and reliable measurement tool.