Lived Experience of Hope in Mothers with Preterm Infant: Design and Psychometrics of Hope scale.

Abstract

Abstract: Introduction: The mother of premature neonates with stresses that sometimes is not controllable has been encountered. One of the strategies for self –control in these mothers is hope, that confronting to these conditions. The hope has essential role in confronting the stress of mothers having premature neonates. But, no instrument has been designed for measuring hope in mothers having premature neonates, so purpose of this study is explanation of lived experience in mothers of preterm neonates and designing and psychometrics a scale for measuring it. Methods: This study was a mixed method research with sequential exploratory design in both qualitative and quantitative stages. In the qualitative, phenomenological study was performed using semi –structural interviews with 12 mothers were participated with premature neonates in NICU of Kurdistan and Kermanshah. The draft scale of hope through interviews, review of existing scales and as well as experts includes 178 items based on five –level Likert item (strongly agree, agree, no opinion, disagree, and completely disagree) was designed. In the quantitative stage with the methodological research method, the face, content validity ratio and the content validity index of the scale of hope were studies by investigating the opinion s of 20 experts and construct validity and criterion –related validity as well as the internal consistency reliability of entire instrument and sub –scales were examined with the sample on 126 women with preterm infants in intensive care units in the provinces of Kurdistan and Kermanshah, mothers with response to questions 68 items hope scale, Beck depression scale and demographic questions social investigated. Findings: From qualitative data analysis, three essential themes including: 1. Compatibility, hope fitness, 2. Self –esteem, the peak of hope and 3. Move –forward, fervor of hope. This result of qualitative section was indicated that the mothers of preterm infants in this study were consistent with neonatal intensive care unit conditions and environment. In the quantitative study, based on psychometric indicators, including face and content validity ratio and the content validity index (Waltz of the Basel), content validity (expert opinion), maternal Hope Scale items, reduced to 39 items and content validity (0.68), divergent validity (0.14), overall internal consistency (0.93), as well as the first subscale (0.86), the second subscale (0.82), and the third subscale (0.84) and test –retest reliability (0.54), were obtained respectively. Conclusion: Lived experience of mothers of premature infants showed that they have used multiple strategies like hopefulness and intellectuality that has been a help to develop of mothers spiritual matters, especially their self –esteem. This study suggests that the scale of Hope mothers of premature infants with 39 items and 3 sub –scale extraction has good reliability and validity.