Development and reliability evaluation of a Pregnancy-Related Anxiety Questionnaire

Objective To develop and evaluate the reliability of a self-designed Pregnancy-Related Anxiety Questionnaire.Methods The original questionnaire containing 13 items was developed based on literature review,focus group discussion,and expert advice.We combined numerous analytical methods to screen the items for the questionnaire including Student's-t test,correlation analysis,factor analysis,and other methods.The initial framework of the questionnaire was determined by exploratory factor analysis.The internal consistency reliability of the questionnaire was assessed by Cronbach's alpha coefficient,test-retest stability,and Pearson correlation.Results The results of Student's-t test and stepwise regression analysis showed that the all items should be included in the model.Almost all items were adopted after performing correlation coefficient test,factor analysis,and internal consistency analysis.Based on the analyses,the initial questionnaire had 13 items.The results of exploratory factor analysis showed that 3 factors were extracted and the cumulative common variance was 51.6%.Factor 1 was self-care and explained 32.3% of the total variance; factor 2 was the anxiety for fetal health and explained 10.5% of the total variance; factor 3 was anxiety for child birth and explained 8.8% of the total variance.The test-retest reliability coefficient and Cronbach's alpha coefficient was 0.79 and 0.81,respectively.Conclusion A Pregnancy Related Anxiety Questionnaire was developed and the questionnaire is reliable,valid,and sensitive.