Validation of the Anxiety Scale for Pregnancy in a Sample of Iranian Women
Bibliographic record
Abstract
IntroductionPregnancy is a special period in a woman's life characterized by rapid physiological, psychological, and social changes during a relatively short period that may predispose women to anxiety (1).A variety of issues in pregnancy may provoke anxiety in women.Among such issues are worries about childbirth and health of the baby, quality of care during labor, the extent of husbands' support and involvement in maternal health care, and the level of support from relatives and friends (2,3).Pregnancy anxiety is different from general anxiety.It is a relatively distinct syndrome which is provoked by pregnancy-specific fears and worries (4).Women who are anxious, experience both emotional and somatic symptoms such as worry, muscle pain, palpitation, insomnia, and gastrointestinal discomfort (2).It has been suggested that high levels of pregnancy-related anxiety play a role in preterm birth (5-8), postpartum depression, and caesarean (7).In addition, it could affect fetal, infant and child development (7,9).Several studies have highlighted the need for the routine measurement of pregnancy anxiety during pregnancy to enable the design of appropriate interventions (10-13).The State-Trait Anxiety Inventory (STAI), a widely used measure of general anxiety, has also been commonly used in research on pregnancy anxiety (14).The STAI scale is suitable for assessing the general level of anxiety, but it does not measure pregnancy-specific stressors (2).Another critique of the use of STAI scale for measuring pregnancy-related anxiety is that it might not predict maternal and child outcomes (2,15,16).The results of a study showed that whereas childbirth-specific anxiety was an important predictor of childbirth duration, general anxiety as measured by the STAI had no predictive value in this regard (17).It is, therefore, important to design and validate an appropriate instrument for measuring pregnancy anxiety.Since pregnancy-related anxiety involves multiple factors related to infant, mother, and childbirth, it needs to be measured by a specialized multidimensional instrument.Apart from some instruments in a true or false format, few instruments for measuring pregnancy-related anxiety are at present available which can measure the severity of anxiety (2) and which also have a clear factorial structure.Levin examined the factorial structure of the Pregnancy Abstract Objectives: Pregnancy-related anxiety is a risk factor for poor outcomes.The aim of this study was to validate the Farsi version of the Anxiety Scale for Pregnancy (ASP) in a sample of Iranian women.Materials and Methods: After translation and back-translation of the ASP, the content validity ratio (CVR) and the content validity index (CVI) of each item were calculated based on the opinions of a panel of 10 experts.Four hundred pregnant women in the third trimester of pregnancy completed the Farsi version of the ASP.For discriminant validity, we compared the ASP mean scores of women with low and high levels of childbirth fear.Confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) was performed to investigate construct validity of the scale.Results: No item had CVR and CVI scores less than 0.62 and 0.8, respectively.The results of the CFA for the ASP were unsatisfactory for the proposed 5-factor model (RMSEA = 0.087, SRMR = 0.092, chi-square/df = 4.03, CFI = 0.87, and GFI = 0.91).After removing item 9, satisfactory CFA results were obtained and the structural model fit was confirmed (RMSEA = 0.066 (CI [0.053, 0.078]), SRMR = 0.069, chi-square/df = 2.71, CFI = 0.93, GFI = 0.95).Cronbach αcoefficient for the 13-item ASP was 0.703.The scale showed moderate correlations with the Spielberger State-Trait Anxiety Inventory (STAI) and Childbirth Attitudes Questionnaire (CAQ) scores (0.61, 0.59, and 0.57, respectively) and could differentiate well between women who preferred cesarean and those requesting vaginal delivery.Conclusion: The present study confirmed the content validity and construct validity of the Farsi version of the 13-item ASP for women in the third trimester of pregnancy.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.003 | 0.006 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Research integrity | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".