Journal article
Women's reported experience of respectful maternity care measures worldwide: a systematic review
BMC Public Health, Vol.Advanced access(1)
29-Mar-2026
PMID: 41906086
Abstract
Background
Measuring women’s experiences of Respectful Maternity Care (RMC) requires valid and reliable tools. Although several RMC tools exist, their methodological quality has not been thoroughly evaluated.
Aim
To evaluate the quality of women’s-reported experience of RMC measures worldwide.
Methods
A comprehensive search of PubMed, Scopus, Embase, Web of Science, and CINAHL databases was conducted. The study protocol was registered with PROSPERO (reference number CRD42024585853). The review followed the PRISMA guideline and employed the PICO framework. Peer-reviewed English-language studies published between 2014 and 2025 were included. The search targeted articles on Women Reported Experience Measures (WREMs) of RMC, with at least one psychometric property. Data were presented using Consensus-based Standards for the Selection of Health Measurement Instruments’ (COSMIN) method. Tools were evaluated for methodological bias, item development, study quality, measurement properties, evidence synthesis, and certainty grading using the COSMIN.
Results
This review included 47 articles on the creation and psychometric assessment of 22 measures. Evidence indicating the scale development of each tool was inadequate. The risk of bias evaluation revealed inadequate methodological quality. Internal consistency and test-retest reliability were insufficient or not undertaken. Many measures were deemed inadequate in terms of criterion, cross-cultural, and structural validity. Responsiveness was reported in one tool and measurement errors were not reported in any tool. Currently, there is no level A recommended scale for measuring RMC.
Conclusion
This review provided a comprehensive evaluation of the available tools to measure RMC. The quality of measurement properties of WREMs of RMC was inadequate. Future studies should develop and validate a standardised tool to measure women-reported experiences of RMC.
Details
- Title
- Women's reported experience of respectful maternity care measures worldwide: a systematic review
- Authors
- Ephrem Yohannes (Corresponding Author) - Griffith UniversityGonfa Moti (Author) - Ambo UniversityEshetu E Chaka (Author) - Ambo UniversityLaura Gabriel (Author) - University of the Sunshine CoastDebra Creedy (Author) - Griffith UniversityCarolyn Hastie (Author) - Griffith University
- Publication details
- BMC Public Health, Vol.Advanced access(1)
- Publisher
- BioMed Central Ltd.
- DOI
- 10.1186/s12889-026-27157-y
- ISSN
- 1471-2458
- PMID
- 41906086
- Copyright note
- This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License, which permits any non-commercial use, sharing, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if you modified the licensed material. You do not have permission under this licence to share adapted material derived from this article or parts of it. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/.
- Data Availability
- All data relevant to the review were included in the paper or uploaded as an additional file.
- Organisation Unit
- School of Health - Midwifery
- Language
- English
- Record Identifier
- 991230330302621
- Output Type
- Journal article
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