Hindi translation and validation of perinatal grief scale (short version): Assessing grief following stillbirth in bereaved mothers

Abstract

Background: Perinatal grief is the experience or emotions of parents following the loss of an infant by miscarriage, stillbirth, neonatal loss, or elective termination for fetal anomalies.

Aim: We aimed to translate and adapt the Perinatal Grief Scale (PGS) into Hindi and evaluate its psychometric properties in a sample of women who had recently experienced a stillbirth.

Method: The PGS was translated and adapted into Hindi following the process of translation and adaptation recommended by the World Health Organization. Internal consistency reliability was assessed by calculating Cronbach's alpha. Exploratory factor analysis (EFA) and confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) were carried out to assess discriminant validity and composite reliability. Additionally, the participants were assessed on four other questionnaires (State-Trait Anxiety Inventory, Edinburgh Postnatal Depression Scale, Generalized Anxiety Disorder Scale, and Patient Health Questionnaire) to test the convergent validity.

Results: The mean age of the participants was 27.57 years (SD = 4.42), and 7% of the mothers were of advanced age. The Cronbach's alpha of the three subscales of PGS was more than 0.85, which confirms the reliability of PGS-H. A significant positive correlation was found between PGS-H and scores of STAI, EPDS, GAD7, and PHQ9 (P < 0.05). EFA identified three domains of PGS. In CFA, the goodness of model fit was confirmed with a root mean square error of approximation of 0.06, a comparative fit index of 0.915, and a goodness of fit index of 0.812.

Conclusion: The PGS-H has been demonstrated to be a reliable and valid instrument for assessing grief in women following pregnancy loss.

Keywords: Bereavement care; perinatal grief; perinatal grief scale; stillbirth; validation.

Figure 1

Conceptual model of confirmatory factor analysis “PGS-H”