Women's view on shared decision making and autonomy in childbirth: Cohort study of Belgian women.

This is a prospective, non-interventional study to explore the birth experience of Flemish women. A self-assembled questionnaire was used to collect data, including the Pregnancy and Childbirth Questionnaire (PCQ), the Labor Agenty Scale (LAS), the Mothers Autonomy Decision Making Scale (MADM),the 9-item Shared Decision Making Questionnaire (SDM–Q9) and four questions on preparation for childbirth. Women who gave birth two to twelve months ago were recruited by means of social media in the Flemish area (Northern part of Belgium).

Linear mixed-effect modelling with backwards variable selection was applied to examine relations with autonomy in decision making.

In total, 1029 mothers participated in this study of which 617 filled out the survey completely. Data were saved with IBM® SPSS® (version 25).