The purpose of this study was to determine why childbirth pain and the childbirth experience are reported to vary so vastly.
The correlation and relative contribution of eleven psychological and background variables to two childbirth pain measures were investigated.
Independent variables included labor length, gravida, age, education, information about pregnancy & delivery, wanting husband or family members to be present, menstrual pain, minor complication in pregnancy, knowledge about pregnancy & delivery, mother´s attitude toward pregnancy & delivery and family member´s attitude toward pregnancy & delivery.
The two dependent variables were pain self-report and overt pain reaction.
This study hypothesized that
1) Pain self-report would be related to overt pain reaction
2) Overt pain reaction would change according to the time of labor
3) Eleven psychological & background variables would be related to pain self-report
4) Eleven psychological & background variables Would be related to overt pain reaction. VAS(Visual Analogue Scale) and OPRRS (Overt Pain Reaction Rating scale) used as a study
tool for measurement of Childbirth pain. Ninety-eight subject with the mean labor length of 8hr 59 min.
The mean age of the total group was 25.3 years, with a range of 19 to 36.
The mean level of education was 8.6 years, with a range of zero to 14 years. 45.9 percent of the women were primiparas.
Cronbach´s Alpha were used to test the reliability of the pain measurement tools. Pearson-
product Moment Correlations and Step-Wise Regression were used to test specific hypotheses. The results of this study were Summarized as follows:
1) The pain measurement tools showed high internal reliability.
2) A number of pain self-report were found to correlate significantly with a number of overt pain reaction.
3) There was a significant increase in overt pain reaction according to the time of labor.
4) Mother´s attitude and family member´s attitude toward pregnancy & delivery were identified as significantly related to pain self-report. However, the amount of variance of each variable or total variables was minimum.
5) Level of education, family member´s attitude toward pregnancy & delivery, age, wanting husband or family members to be present were identified as significantly related to overt pain reaction.
In conclusion, there was-no variable which consistently influences the pain at significantly level.
In the future study, variables such as personality trait, show pain, anxiety about pregnancy & delivery should be tested to determine whether these variables are closely related to childbirth pain.
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