The pregnancy experience scale–brief version

Abstract

The role of maternal stress during pregnancy remains a focus of academic and clinical inquiry, yet there are few instruments available that measure pregnancy-specific contributors to maternal psychological state. This report examines the psychometric properties of an abbreviated version of the Pregnancy Experience Scale (PES) designed to evaluate maternal appraisal of positive and negative stressors during pregnancy. The PES-Brief consists of the top 10 items endorsed as pregnancy hassles and 10 pregnancy uplifts from the original scale. The PES-Brief was administered to 112 women with low risk, singleton pregnancies five times between 24 and 38 weeks gestation. Scoring includes frequency and intensity measures for hassles and uplifts, as well as composite measures for the relation between the two. Internal reliability, test–retest reliability and convergent validity were comparable with the original version. The PES-Brief provides an economical source of information on stress appraisal and emotional valence towards pregnancy.

Keywords:

• Pregnancy stress
• anxiety
• uplifts
• hassles
• questionnaire