Objectives: The study aimed to investigate the reliability of recall of the mother's level of perceived stress early in pregnancy, three months following birth using the perceived stress scale questionnaire (PSS).
Subjects and methods: Out of a total of 243 women approached, the PSS was issued to 183 volunteers in the first trimester of pregnancy. Three months following birth of their child, the PSS was completed once again by 101 mothers who were asked to recall their level of perceived stress at the time the first questionnaire was issued. Pearson's correlation was used to determine the reliability of recall.
Results: The total score from the PSS was calculated for all 14 questions, and then for subsets of 10 and 4 of these questions. The mean scores for the first group of questionnaires were 22, 15 and 5 and the second group 20, 13 and 4 respectively. The Pearson's correlation coefficients for PSS14, PSS10 and PSS4 were 0.72,0.73 and 0.68 respectively.
Conclusion: Retrospective recall as measured by the PSS was found to be reasonably reliable, and could potentially be used as a measure of stress early in pregnancy.
Project funded by TayRen Grant number: 081100