Validation of the Revised Impact of Miscarriage Scale for Swedish conditions and comparison between Swedish and American couples’ experiences after miscarriage

Abstract

Introduction: There is a lack of knowledge in women’s and men’s experience of miscarriage. The Revised Impact of Miscarriage Scale (RIMS) has been used in United States to measure the experiences after miscarriage. The first objective was to test the consistency of RIMS for Swedish conditions. The second purpose of this study was to compare Swedish and American couples’ experience of miscarriage by use of the RIMS.

Methods: Forward and back translation was used for translating RIMS into Swedish. This is a hospital-based comparative study including Swedish couples (n = 70) and American couples (n = 70). The couples were matched by the women’s age, week of miscarriage and number of children. All participants answered socio-demographic, fertility and depression-scale questions in addition to RIMS.

Results: Cronbach’s alpha analysis was above 0.650, the mean value was 0.824. There was no significant difference between the Swedish and American participants on the factors ‘Isolation/Guilt’ and ‘Devastating event’, but the Swedish women and men scored significantly lower on the factor ‘Loss of baby’ than the American women and men. The men, Swedish and American combined, scored lower than the women in all factors but the correlation within the couples was similar for both Swedish and American couples.

Conclusions: The high consistency between the countries suggests that the RIMS questionnaire is reliable for both women and men to be used in both countries and two of three factors were similar between the two countries.

Chinese abstract

简介：目前缺乏对女性和男性流产体验的了解。修订后的流产量表（RIMS）在美国已用于评估流产后的体验。本研究的第一个目标是评估瑞典国情与RIMS的相容性。第二个目标是使用RIMS比较瑞典和美国夫妇的流产体验。

方法：将RIMS准确翻译成瑞典语。这是一项在医院进行的以瑞典夫妇（70例）和美国夫妇（70例）为对象的对比研究。每对夫妇按照女性的年龄, 流产周数和子女数进行配对。除了RIMS, 所有的参与者都回答了关于社会人口统计学, 生育力和抑郁情况的问题。

结果： Cronbach’s α分析值在0.650以上, 平均值为0.824。瑞典和美国参与者在”孤立/内疚”和”毁灭性事件”因素上没有显着差异, 但瑞典夫妇在”失去婴儿”因素方面比美国夫妇得分显着降低。瑞典和美国按性别合并后, 男性得分在各因素上都低于女性, 但夫妻之间的相关性瑞典夫妇和美国夫妇相似。

结论：国家之间的高度一致性表明RIMS问卷两个国家的男女都可以使用, 两国三个因素中的两个是相似的。

Keywords:

• Spontaneous abortion
• pregnancy loss
• stressful event

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Funding

The study was financed by the Family Planning Foundation at Uppsala University, Fru Tora Wåhlins Foundation and Vinnova.