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Abstract

The diverging attitudes among maternity care providers (MCP) are increasingly evident. Caring for women in labour requires collaboration among MCPs. An individual MCP brings a distinct field of expertise and philosophy to his or her practice, which creates the potential for environments with parallel and conflicting attitudes towards birth among MCPs. There is a lack of literature that investigates MCPs’ attitudes. Therefore, a legitimate rationale exists to explore MCPs’ attitudes towards birth. This thesis provides a description of the psychometric testing of a new questionnaire, the Nurses’ Attitudes and Beliefs Questionnaire (NABQ). A cross-sectional design was used to quantitatively investigate the NABQ by (a) assessing internal consistency and inter-item reliability and (b) conducting hypothesis testing and exploratory factor analysis. A convenience sample of nurses from a tertiary care hospital returned 72 NABQs. The internal consistency and inter-item reliability were poor. Of 13 hypotheses, only four were supported. The factor analysis resulted in seven factors with low Cronbach’s alphas. A subset of the sample (six nurses) participated in a focus group to comment on the structure and wording of the NABQ. An inductive content analysis of the data resulted in seven relevant themes and concepts. These themes were: (a) Institutional Constraints and Practice Setting Impede Attitudes; (b) Research Serves as a Weak Reflection of Attitudes; (c) Relevance of the Questions; (d) The NABQ Lacks Context to Identify Attitudes; (e) The NABQ Requires Improvements; (f) Positive and Negative Impression of the NABQ and (g) The NABQ Demonstrates a Biased Attitude Towards Normal Birth. The thesis concludes with a discussion of the quantitative and focus group findings as well as the implications for nursing practice, education and research.