Abstract:
Spontaneous vaginal birth may be related to womens intention to have it and its associated factors. This predictive correlational research aimed to study vaginal birth intention and factors predicting vaginal birth intention among primiparous women which included attitudes towards vaginal birth, subjective norms towards vaginal birth, perceived childbirth self-efficacy control, and childbirth fear. Participants were 172 primiparous women who attended the antenatal care clinic at Queen Savang Vadhana Memorial Hospital. They were selected by simple random sampling. Data had been collected from March to August 2022 by selfreport questionnaires including demographic questionnaire, Attitudes towards Vaginal Birth Questionnaire, Subjective Norm towards Vaginal Birth Questionnaire, Perceived Childbirth Self-Efficacy Control Questionnaire, Childbirth Fear Questionnaire, and Vaginal Birth Intention Questionnaire. Cronbachs alpha coefficients of thequestionnaires were .72, 91, .92, .92 and .95, respectively. Data were analyzed by descriptive statistics and standard multiple regression. Results revealed that participants had vaginal birth intention at a high level (M = 17.20, SD = 3.39). Attitudes and subjective norms towards vaginal birth, perceived childbirth self-efficacy control, and childbirth fear combinedly explained 53.1% of the variance in vaginal birth intention (R 2 = .531, F4,167= 47.22,p < .001). Subjective norms towards vaginal birth were the strongest predictor of vaginal birth intention (β = .45, p< .001) followed by perceived childbirth self-efficacy control (β = .35, p< .001). Findings suggested that primiparous women might have spontaneous vaginal birth intention if nurses encourage pregnant women to exchange knowledge with women having positively subjective norms towards vaginal birth. Also, promote women to have childbirth self-efficacy control.