Measures
The socio-demographic questionnaire, Wijma Delivery Expectancy/Experience Questionnaire (W-DEQ), and
Beck Anxiety Inventory (BAI) have been applied for data collecting process. The W-DEQ has been developed to
measure a construction of fear related to childbirth during pregnancy and by asking the woman about her
expectations before the delivery by means of the woman’s cognitive appraisal regarding the delivery process and its
first psychometric properties were evaluated by Wijma and colleagues (1998). The W-DEQ is a validated 33-item
questionnaire, giving a minimum score of 0 and a maximum score of 165. A higher score indicates a more intense
fear of childbirth. The W-DEQ was formally translated into Turkish and the validity, reliability and psychometric
properties of the scale were evaluated for a Turkish population by Körükcü et al (2009). Both the split-half
correlation coefficient (0.90) and the alpha coefficient (0.89) are well above the 0.70 criterion for the split-half
reliability and internal consistency reliability.
BAI was used to measure physical, emotional and cognitive aspects of anxiety and fear of losing control. The
BAI is 21-item self-report measure and responses on each item range from 0 (not at all bothered) to 3 (severely
bothered), with a possible range of total scores from 0 to 63. The higher points of this scale reflect higher level of
anxiety. As part of the development of the BAI, Beck and Steer, 1991) obtained internal consistency and test-retest
reliability estimates of 0.92 and of 0.75, respectively. The BAI was shown to be applicable for Turkish population
by Ulusoy et al. (1998).