Validation of Iranian Version of Pregnancy Related Anxiety Questionnaire.

BACKGROUND: Pregnancy is an acute period in the lifetime of women, during which numerous excitatory physical and social changes occur. The purpose of this study is confirmatory factor analysis of Pregnancy Related Anxiety Questionnaire (PRAQ) that is designed in Iranian pregnant women population.

METHODS: A total of 170 pregnant women in health centers of Kerman city were chosen through random sampling method and completed PRAQ questionnaire and Beck Anxiety Inventory (BAI). In this study, confirmatory factor analysis and concurrent validity are used to evaluate the validity of models; and to test-retest and Cronbach alpha were used for evaluating external and internal reliability in SPSS-19 and the AMOS software to evaluate reliability of models.

RESULTS: Confirmatory factor analysis gave an acceptable value for the latent PRAQ in the question scale and 5 micro-scale level. Furthermore, significant correlation between the components and the overall scale of the PRAQ questionnaire with the BAI confirmed concurrent validity of questionnaire. The reliability of questionnaire is confirmed based on Cronbach's alpha coefficient value of 0.78 that calculated 0.69-0.76 for the five-factors. A month later, reliability coefficient amplitude of test-retest on forty pregnant women was between 0.65 and 0.72 which shows the reliability of PRAQ over time.

CONCLUSIONS: The short form of anxiety during pregnancy questionnaire has the essential psychometric properties. In this study, five-factors extracted in the PRAQ were adapted with the factors extracted from the original version. This study introduces an instrument that can be benefit in measuring anxiety and concerns of women during pregnancy.