International Comparison of Studies Using the Perinatal Grief Scale: A Decade of Research on Pregnancy Loss

Abstract

The Perinatal Grief Scale (PGS) has been used in many studies of loss in pregnancy, including miscarriage, stillbirth, induced abortion, neonatal death, and relinquishment for adoption. This article describes 22 studies from 4 countries that used the PGS with a total of 2485 participants. Studies that report Cronbach's alpha for their own samples give evidence of very high internal consistency reliability. Evidence for the validity of the PGS is also reviewed, such as convergent validity seen in its association with measures of mental health, social support, and marital satisfaction. The standard errors of the means for the total scale and for the subscales reveal fairly consistent scores, in spite of very different samples and types of loss; computation of means and standard deviations for the studies as a whole permits us to establish normal score ranges. Significantly higher scores were found in studies that recruited participants from support groups and self-selected populations rather than from medical sources, and from U.S. studies compared with those in Europe.

Personal Fear of Death and Grief in Bereaved Mothers

“…The mean value for PGS-33 Grief was in accord with the values reported in the literature (Toedter, Lasker, & Janssen, 2001). Although the mean value for each MFODS individual scale was within an SD of the value reported by Neimeyer and Moore (1994), the present study's participants compared with the women reported by Neimeyer and Moore (1994) had somewhat greater Fear for Significant Others, Fear of Conscious Death, and Fear of Premature Death (Table 1).…”

Contexts and evolution of women's responses to miscarriage during the first year after loss

“…Perhaps, it was women's personal resources such as emotional strength (Swanson, 2000) or having a coping repertoire born of prior life experiences (Van & Meleis, 2003) that influenced their resolution. Likewise, the presence of environmental resources such as the presence of a caring mate and the support of friends and family (Conway & Russell, 2000;Swanson, 2000;Toedter et al) may have contributed to emotional healing.…”

Problematic Emotions and Maternal Grief

“…The intensity of maternal grief was measured with the PGS-33 (Potvin et al, 1989), which is a psychometrically valid and reliable 33-item self-report questionnaire with three factor-analyzed 11-item subscales referred to as Active Grief, Difficulty Coping and Despair (Toedter, Lasker, & Alhadeff, 1988;Toedter, Lasker, & Janssen, 2001). The Active Grief subscale contains items that reflect anguish over the death of a baby, such as, "I feel empty inside."…”