2. Materials and methods
2.1 Study population
A cross sectional study conducted at Abha Maternity Hospital in Abha, Saudi Arabia from December 2012 to
April 2013 using self-administered structured questionnaires developed by the researchers to determine the
perception, actual practices and barriers among health-care providers regarding non-pharmacological pain relief
during labor. In addition, delivered women were interviewed in the postpartum unit. They were asked to rank
their satisfaction level and clarify the extent they perceived non-pharmacological pain relief management. The
study population consisted of a total sample of 88 health-care providers known as doctors, registered nurses and
interns along with a total sample of 400 delivered women. An approval was taken from the King Khalid
University’s Ethical Committee (REC # 2012-12-06) and the previously mentioned hospital to conduct the study.
An informed written consent was secured from the participant.
2.2 Questionnaire interview
Data were collected using a self-administered structured questionnaire which involved two major parts. The first
part was designed to examine health-care providers’ perception related to non-pharmacological pain relief
methods while the second part assessed women’s birth experiences. The first part was divided into four main
sections: the first section includes demographic data, the second section includes four main categories of nonpharmacological
pain relief, the third section of the questionnaire reflects the health-care provider’s opinion
towards the benefits of non-pharmacological pain relief methods and finally, the fourth section of the
questionnaire examines the subjects’ opinions regarding barriers for using non-pharmacological pain relief
methods using the four point likert scale (agree, strongly agree, disagree, strongly disagree).
2.3 Data collection procedure
All health-care providers were invited to share their experiences in a one-to-one interview format and were
interviewed once in addition to the delivered women. A pilot study of ten intern nurses and forty delivered
women was conducted during a two week period in order to examine the clarity of the questionnaire. The
reliability coefficient was calculated and revealed Cronbach’s alpha for the first part of the questionnaire = 0.82
and 77.0 for the second part of the questionnaire indicating good internal consistency. This study is grounded by
the goal attainment theory which was developed by Imogene King in the early 1960s.
2.4 Statistical analysis
Data were coded, validated and analyzed using the Statistical Package for Social Sciences (SPSS). Frequency,
percentage, arithmetic mean for describing the central tendency of observation for each variable studied and
standard deviation for the measure of dispersion of results around the mean were used to present the data. Values
of P ≤ 0.05 were considered to indicate significant differences.