Development of a scale for pregnancy-related discomforts

The purpose of this study was to develop a new scale of pregnancy-related discomforts for evaluating expectant women's psychosomatic states during each trimester.

The study population comprised 786 expectant women (response rate: 38.2%) who underwent antenatal examinations in 13 hospitals located in eight regions of Japan. Respondents answered questions about the incidence of 95 well-known symptoms related to pregnancy. Responses were divided into three groups based on the gestational period. Three scales were then prepared based on item and factor analyses, and reliability and validity were confirmed.

The resultant global scales for the first, second, and third trimester consisted of 15, 13, and 13 items, respectively. The three global scales could be divided into three, three, and two subscales, respectively. The reliability coefficients of the global and subscales were 0.7 or more. Validity was confirmed by the conventional group method.

This is the first study to develop scales for pregnancy-related discomforts in Japanese women in order to evaluate psychosomatic states during each trimester of pregnancy. Because the number of scale items had decreased by more than half as compared to previous scales, this new, more feasible scale may be useful in clinical settings.