Prenatal anticipatory stress: Baby preparation and worry scale-revised in the Dutch context

Background: Prenatal distress encompasses a range of different emotions, worries, and experiences of stress. The Baby Preparation and Worry Scale (Baby-PAWS) was recently developed to target anticipatory worries during pregnancy about the postnatal period. However, the Baby-PAWS questionnaire was only examined in the United States of America, limiting the questionnaire's generalizability to different countries. To address this issue, we performed a psychometric evaluation of the questionnaire in a Dutch sample and examined associations between the Baby-PAWS questionnaire and established measur... Mehr ...

Verfasser: Nina Bruinhof
Ela Sehic
Gregory R. Hancock
Maria A. Gartstein
Carolina de Weerth
Dokumenttyp: Artikel
Erscheinungsdatum: 2024
Reihe/Periodikum: Comprehensive Psychiatry, Vol 128, Iss , Pp 152437- (2024)
Verlag/Hrsg.: Elsevier
Schlagwörter: Perinatal mental health / Cross-cultural / Questionnaire validation / Infant temperament / Psychiatry / RC435-571
Sprache: Englisch
Permalink: https://search.fid-benelux.de/Record/base-28985253
Datenquelle: BASE; Originalkatalog
Powered By: BASE
Link(s) : https://doi.org/10.1016/j.comppsych.2023.152437

Background: Prenatal distress encompasses a range of different emotions, worries, and experiences of stress. The Baby Preparation and Worry Scale (Baby-PAWS) was recently developed to target anticipatory worries during pregnancy about the postnatal period. However, the Baby-PAWS questionnaire was only examined in the United States of America, limiting the questionnaire's generalizability to different countries. To address this issue, we performed a psychometric evaluation of the questionnaire in a Dutch sample and examined associations between the Baby-PAWS questionnaire and established measures of maternal distress (i.e., EPDS, STAI, PRAQ-R) and infant temperament (i.e., IBQ-R). Methods: Healthy pregnant women (N = 521) completed questionnaires during their third trimester and postnatally, including the Baby-PAWS and distress measures. A subsample of mothers (N = 194) also reported on infant temperament at 12 weeks postpartum. Results: Exploratory factor analysis suggested a four-factor structure for the 16-item questionnaire in our Dutch sample, as compared to the expected three-factor structure found in the original psychometric evaluation with the American sample. The total Baby-PAWS score was related to pre-and postnatal depression, anxiety, stress, and specific scales of infant temperament. American women scored higher on the Baby-PAWS items than Dutch women. Limitations: Our participants had higher-than-average socioeconomic status, limiting the generalizability of the findings. Conclusion: The current analyses indicate good validity of the Baby-PAWS in a Dutch sample. Furthermore, our results highlight cross-cultural differences in perinatal mental health and show the importance of examining instrument structure of context-dependent constructs, such as prenatal worries.