Quality of prenatal care questionnaire: Instrument development and testing

The overall goal of this research is to develop a new instrument, the Quality of Prenatal Care Questionnaire (QPCQ), and to conduct testing of this instrument. Prenatal care has long been considered an important strategy to reduce population levels of adverse neonatal and maternal birth outcomes. However, its effectiveness in improving perinatal outcomes has been questioned. It has been argued that adequacy of utilization is less important than the quality of prenatal care as quality focuses on what is actually done in the process of giving and receiving care. Research to test this hypothesis is hindered by the lack of a measure to assess prenatal care quality. The development of such a measure will be based on the research evidence regarding effective clinical practices as well as on the viewpoints of both women and prenatal care providers. The items selected for the instrument will be reviewed by experts and those deemed most relevant will be included in the QPCQ. Testing of the QPCQ will then be conducted to determine its validity (does it really measure quality?) and reliability (how dependable are the findings?).