Pregnant Women's Ratings of Different Factors Influencing Psychological Stress during Pregnancy

Abstract

A group of predominantly white and low-income women answered questionnaires including (a) rating adjustment required by various life events, (b) listing events occurring during pregnancy or the preceding year, (c) personal and social resources for coping with life events, (d) the Manifest Anxiety Scale, and (e) the Lie Scale of the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory (MMPI). Results indicate that making life-event scales more sensitive as measures of stress will require specifying the emotional significance that life events have for a person, either by obtaining the person's own ratings, or by using mean life adjustment ratings from appropriate samples. Mean adjustment ratings given 69 different life events are listed for the present sample. Women who were more candid (as judged by the Lie Scale scores) reported significantly more stressful life events and had higher Manifest Anxiety Scale scores, indicating the need to control for subject denial in stress research. However, the amount of stressful life change and the resources for coping with such change also made significant independent contributions to the variance in anxiety scale scores, suggesting the feasibility of measuring different factors influencing psychological stress in pregnant women.