Validation of the Intimate Bonds Measure for women who are pregnant or have recently given birth in Vietnam.

Introduction: Sensitive, valid measures to assess the quality of the intimate partner relationship are necessary for both clinical practice and research. The aim of this study was to examine the validity of the Intimate Bonds Measure (IBM) in women who were pregnant or had recently given birth in Vietnam.

Methods: The IBM was translated and culturally verified in a step-by-step process with Vietnamese health workers, researchers and community members. The validation study was nested within two larger community-based cross-sectional investigations: the first in 2006, which recruited 199 pregnant women and 165 mothers of newborns, and the second in 2010, which recruited 419 pregnant women. Internal structure was assessed by factor analysis and Cronbach's alpha and construct validity by comparison with relevant factors.

Results: Exploratory factor analyses revealed an identical factor structure to the one reported by the measure's developers in an Anglophone Australian population more than 20 years ago. The two factors replicate exactly the Care and Control subscales and Cronbach's alpha (from 0.68 to 0.83) indicates high internal consistency in both sub-scales. Mean scores of the Care-V and Control-V sub-scales were associated significantly and in expected directions with whether a woman could confide in, felt supported by or was frightened of her partner, or had experienced intimate partner violence and measures of mental health status.

Discussion: The Vietnamese version of the IBM (IBM-V) is comprehensible, meaningful and appears to be a valid measure the construct of quality of relationship with an intimate partner among women in this setting.