Development and validation of the Knowledge and Attitude on the effect of COVID-19 Infection on Pregnancy (KACIP) questionnaire among pregnant women in Malaysia

Introduction: Assessing and understanding pregnant women's knowledge and perceptions of COVID-19 infection and its implications for pregnancy is critical for meeting their specific needs. However, currently, there is a lack of validated questionnaires to assess this issue. This study aims to determine the validity and reliability of the Knowledge and Attitude on the effect of COVID-19 Infection on Pregnancy (KACIP) Questionnaire Among pregnant women in Malaysia. Materials and methods: KACIP was developed using the Health Belief Model (HBM), extensive literature review and expert judgement. The questionnaire underwent a sequential validation process, content validation, face validation, Exploratory Factor Analysis (EFA) and internal consistency reliability-based Cronbach's alpha statistic. For the construct validation, a cross-sectional study was conducted among 200 pregnant women attending the antenatal clinic at Universiti Sains Malaysia Hospital. Results: The final KACIP consisted of two sections; Knowledge and Attitude on COVID-19 infection effect on pregnancy. The Knowledge section comprises three domains (13 items) and the Attitude section has two domains (9 items). Preliminary KACIP demonstrated a high item Content Validity Index and Face Validity Index. The Kaiser-Meyer-Olkin values for the Knowledge and Attitude sections were 0.785 and 0.783 respectively and had a significant p-value of