Background and purpose: The midwife's self-efficacy in supporting mothers during labor affects the onset of midwifery support in labor and childbirth. To date, there is no appropriate national instrument for measuring midwives self-efficacy of labor support in Iran. The present study aimed to investigate the factorial structure, validity and reliability of the Persian version of the self-efficacy for labor support scale.
Materials and methods: A methodological study was carried out in which 213 midwives from selected hospitals affiliated to Tehran University of Medical Sciences enrolled between January 2017 and September 2017. The participants completed a demographic questionnaire and the self-efficacy for labor support scale. In order to assess the validity of the instrument, qualitative face and content validity was performed. Construct validity was also evaluated using confirmatory factor analysis. Finally, the reliability of the scale was studied by Spearman's correlation coefficient and internal consistency.
Results: The qualitative face and content validity of the Persian version of labor support self-efficacy scale was confirmed, and a confirmatory factor analysis showed that it was well structured. The reliability of the scale using Cronbach's alpha coefficient was 0.93 and the Spearman's coefficient correlation was 0.72 indicating a good reliability of the Persian version of the scale.
Conclusion: The findings showed that the Persian version of the self-efficacy for labor support scale has good validity and reliability and could be used as an appropriate instrument for assessing self-efficacy for labor support by midwives in Iran.
 

Keywords: self-efficacy, midwifery, labor, psychometrics, scale

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