| Summary: | Women encounter physical, emotional, and psychological changes during
pregnancy. The literature indicates that some women find these changes to be stressful.
They may respond to this stress by feeling anxious. The frequency and intensity of the
anxiety reaction depends on how women perceive these stressors and on their ability to
cope with the anxiety. The studies that have investigated pregnancy and anxiety have
used general measures of state anxiety. A search for a measure of anxiety that pertains to
pregnancy produced a number of measures that were specific to one or several
dimensions of pregnancy. There are no measures available that look at anxiety and the
multidimensional components of pregnancy. Therefore the intent of this research project
was to develop and validate such a measure.
Spielberger’s theory and measure of state and trait anxiety was examined in detail.
The development of The Anxiety Scale For Pregnancy (ASP) was based on his research
of state anxiety. An extensive review of the literature on pregnancy led to the
construction of the items for this measure. The initial 82 items were pretested by a group
of experts in the field of pregnancy and a sample of 40 women. The revised items
comprised ten dimensions of pregnancy and 73 items relating to those dimensions. This
version of ASP was field tested on a group of 270 pregnant women.
Validation of ASP was through confirmatory factor analysis, group
differentiation, and concurrent validity. Confirmatory factor analysis of the ten
dimensions and 73 items did not produce a good fit of the model. The model was
respecified and resulted in a hypothesized model of 14 observed variables and five latent
constructs, baby, labour, marital, attractive, and support. The overall goodness-of-fit for
this model is excellent. Group differentiation was assesses throught the variables,
trimester, gravidity, age, and health during pregnancy. The mean differences between the
group variables and the subscales of ASP supported previous research in the domain of
pregnancy and anxiety. Concurrent validity was demonstrated through the strong correlations between the scores of ASP and the State and Trait Anxiety Inventory, as well
as ASP and the State Self-Esteem Scale which produced, as expected, a strong negative
correlation. The results from this study indicate that the ASP is a valid measure of five
different dimensions relating to pregnancy and those dimensions are based on an
extensive review of the literature.
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