Victoria Fallon|Jason C. G. Halford|Kate Bennett|Joanne A. Harrold
The Postpartum Specific Anxiety Scale: development and preliminary validation
University of Liverpool|University of Liverpool|University of Liverpool|University of Liverpool
perinatal symptoms anxiety increasingly recognised due high prevalence impact studies using pregnancyspecific anxiety measures found may predict perinatal outcomes effectively general measures however measure exists assess anxieties specific postpartum study aimed develop validate measure postpartum specific anxiety scale psas accurately represents specific anxieties faced postpartum women using fourstage methodology 1 51 items generated interviews conducted group 19 postpartum women two time points 2 scale reviewed refined diverse expert panel 3 online pilot study n 146 conducted assess comprehensibility acceptability 4 online sample 1282 mothers infants 6 months old completed psas battery convergent measures subsample n 262 repeated psas 2 weeks later psas possessed good face content validity comprehensible acceptable postpartum women psas scores significantly correlated measures indicating good convergent validity principal component analyses pca revealed simple fourfactor structure reliability overall scale individual psas factors proved good excellent preliminary receiver operating characteristic roc analysis also suggested psas may useful screening tool psychometric evidence suggests psas acceptable valid reliable research tool assess anxieties specific postpartum period next steps iterative validation process considered research screening purposes