TY  - JOUR
A1  - Petersen, Juliana
A1  - Paulitsch, Michael Anton
A1  - Güthlin, Corina
A1  - Gensichen, Jochen
A1  - Jahn, Albrecht
T1  - A survey on worries of pregnant women - testing the German version of the Cambridge Worry Scale
T2  - BMC public health
N2  - Background: Pregnancy is a transition period in a woman's life characterized by increased worries and anxiety. The Cambridge Worry Scale (CWS) was developed to assess the content and extent of maternal worries in pregnancy. It has been increasingly used in studies over recent years. However, a German version has not yet been developed and validated. The aim of this study was (1) to assess the extent and content of worries in pregnancy on a sample of women in Germany using a translated and adapted version of the Cambridge Worry Scale, and (2) to evaluate the psychometric properties of the German version. Methods: We conducted a cross-sectional study and enrolled 344 pregnant women in the federal state of Baden-Wurttemberg, Germany. Women filled out structured questionnaires that contained the CWS, the Spielberger-State-Trait-Anxiety Inventory (STAI), as well as questions on their obstetric history. Antenatal records were also analyzed. Results: The CWS was well understood and easy to fill in. The major worries referred to the process of giving birth (CWS mean value 2.26) and the possibility that something might be wrong with the baby (1.99), followed by coping with the new baby (1.57), going to hospital (1.29) and the possibility of going into labour too early (1.28). The internal consistency of the scale (0.80) was satisfactory, and we found a four-factor structure, similar to previous studies. Tests of convergent validity showed that the German CWS represents a different construct compared with state and trait anxiety but has the desired overlap. Conclusions: The German CWS has satisfactory psychometric properties. It represents a valuable tool for use in scientific studies and is likely to be useful also to clinicians.
Y1  - 2010
UR  - http://publikationen.ub.uni-frankfurt.de/frontdoor/index/index/docId/7462
UR  - https://nbn-resolving.org/urn:nbn:de:hebis:30-73771
SN  - 1471-2458
N1  - © 2009 Petersen et al., licensee BioMed Central Ltd. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
VL  - 9
IS  - Art. 940
SP  - 1
EP  - 9
PB  - BioMed Central
CY  - London
ER  -