Decisional conflict, anxiety, and social support among Chinese pregnant women making further prenatal testing decisions

ABSTRACT

Objective

This study aimed to examine decisional conflict and identify its predictors in Chinese pregnant women who were making decisions about further prenatal testing after receiving a screening result of high-risk for Down syndrome.

Method

A cross-sectional study was conducted from September 2020 to July 2021 in Guangzhou, China. Two-hundred and sixty pregnant women receiving a screening result of high-risk for Down syndrome completed a questionnaire comprising the Decisional Conflict Scale, Self‐rating Anxiety Scale, and Social Support Rating Scale.

Results

The mean decisional conflict score was 28.8 ± 13.6, representing a moderate level. Advanced age (≥35 years), having a religious belief, not knowing about non-invasive or invasive prenatal testing, choosing NIPT for further prenatal testing, high levels of anxiety, and low levels of social support were significant predictors of decisional conflict, explaining 28.4% of its variance (F = 18.115, p < 0.001).

Conclusions

The results highlighted the necessity of assessing patients’ decisional conflict and providing adequate interventions along the prenatal care trajectory. The results also showed that providing good support has an essential value for women by relieving their decisional conflict.

KEYWORDS:

• Down syndrome
• decisional conflict
• anxiety
• social support
• pregnancy

Acknowledgements

We want to thank all the pregnant women who participated in the study.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Geolocation information

School of nursing, Sun Yat-sen University is located in 74#, Zhongshan Road II, Yue-xiu District, Guangzhou, China.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Humanities and Social Science Fund of The Chinese Ministry of Education under Grant [21YJAZH020]