Factor structure and psychometric characteristics of the City birth Trauma Scale- Slovak version

Objective

The City Birth Trauma Scale (City BiTS) is a questionnaire designed to assess the posttraumatic symptoms after birth. This study aimed to explore the factors structure, internal consistency, known-groups validity, and convergent validity of the City Birth Trauma Scale in Slovakia.

Methods

Cross-sectional Slovak national data from the INTERSECT study were analyzed in this study. The research was set in four public hospital sites in central and eastern Slovakia. A 28-item City BiTS online questionnaire was administered to 437 women 6–8 weeks postpartum study (mean age 30.5 ± 4,8; range18-45), along with the Edinburgh Postnatal Depression Scale (EPDS) and the Post-Traumatic Stress Diagnostic Scale indicating previous trauma.

Results

The stressor criterion of PTSD based on DSM 5 classification was met by 11.5 % of postpartum women in the Slovak sample, and all criteria for PTSD were met by 2.8 % of participants. Significantly higher City BiTS scores were found among primiparas (p ≤ 0.01), women who experienced previous trauma (p ≤ 0.001), with positive psychiatric anamnesis (p ≤ 0.001), and women after assisted vaginal birth or emergency caesarian section (p ≤ 0.001). The Slovak version of City BiTS has been shown to have good reliability and good divergent and known-groups validity. The results of confirmatory factor analysis showed that the two-factor model of the BSS-R offers a good fit to the Slovak data (χ²_{(df = 169)} = 574, p < 0.001, CFI = 0.90 and RMSEA = 0.08).

Conclusions

The Slovak version of the City Birth Trauma scale has been found to have good psychometric properties comparable with other validation studies of this measure.