[Mother Generated-Index--a new indicator of antenatal and postnatal quality of life]

The objective of this study was 1. description of an antenatal and postnatal quality of life measure, namely Mother Generated-Index (MGI), and its applications in the scientific studies. 2. critical analysis of MGI survey. 3. suggestion of further studies on MGI survey.

The MGI is a three-step questionnaire. Women were asked to specify the important areas of their life that had been affected by their pregnancy (Step 1). Having specified up to eight such areas, the women scored each of them from 0 to 10 (Step 2). The women allocated 20 'spending points' between areas, with more points given to those aspects that their felt were more important (Step 3). The sub-index MGI 1 is defined as the mean of the Step 2 scores, and the subindex MGI 2 is defined as the weighted mean of Step 2 scores with weights given in Step 3. MGI was used in several studies to evaluate postnatal and antenatal quality-of-life. It was used to study HRQL of different populations, namely women in Scotland and in India, and it was used together with number of psychometric tools for measuring HRQL (generic and specific), such as EPDS, SF-12, PNMI, MAMA, GHQ-30, SF-36v2, EQ-SD.

1. Three step questionnaire MGI was used in several studies on postnatal and antenatal quality-of-life. The authors are planning further study on antenatal HRQL with MGI 2. MGI should be still treated as a methodological experiment. It is not clear what mean MGI scores, how surveying, description of query, multi-culture and socio-economical factors can affect the results. However, MGI can be easily translated to Polish, since it does not require linguistic validation, which is important because of lack of Polish versions of postnatal and antenatal HRQL tools. 3. Further studies on MGI are needed. In particular, test-retest study should be perform to verify reliability of MGI.