Sample
The population of the study included postpartum women at the Postpartum Care Service of Atatürk City Hospital in the Balıkesir province of Turkey. To conduct factor analyses in psychometric studies, it is recommended to include a sample size of 5 to 10 times the number of items on a scale. Other recommendations for scale development and testing studies include a minimum of 200 participants for exploratory factor analysis (EFA), a minimum of 200 participants for confirmatory factor analysis (CFA), and a minimum of 400 participants in total.20-24 As the draft scale form included 39 items, it was planned to include at least 390 participants, while the sample of the study consequently included 403 participants. However, because the responses of 5 participants to the scale items included missing data, the analyses excluded the data of these participants, and the study was completed with 398 postpartum women.
The inclusion criteria for this study were being at least 18 years old, having a living baby, and being ready to be discharged. Postpartum women who were younger than 18 years old, those who were not ready to be discharged, and those who had lost their babies were excluded. The data collection forms were administered to the women who were at the postpartum care service by the researchers. It took each participant approximately 10 minutes to fill out the forms.