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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.
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In the citing paper
“The PGS-33 is the most common grief scale used among the perinatal loss literature and has been extensively evaluated, with psychometrically sound properties reported (including Cronbach’s alphas between 0.92 and 0.96) [66, 67].”
From Factors contributing to men’s grief following pregnancy loss and neonatal death: further development of an emerging model in an Australian sample (2021) · cites this paper as [66]
In the citing paper
“Overall, high levels of CG are generally associated with a poorer state of mental health.13”
From Complicated grief after perinatal loss (2012) · cites this paper as [13]
In the citing paper
“Based on stress theory, social support is thought to have a buffering effect, and poor social support from family and friends is associated with CG reactions.8,10,13,32”
From Complicated grief after perinatal loss (2012) · cites this paper as [13]
In the citing paper
“These findings are consistent with the study by Toedter and colleagues who evaluated pre -loss mental health13 and found that pre-event status predicted the likelihood of a persistent intense grief reaction at 2 years of follow-up.”
From Complicated grief after perinatal loss (2012) · cites this paper as [13]
In the citing paper
“High levels of perceived emotional support from society is consistently associated with lower scores of perinatal grief in all studies examining it.13”
From Complicated grief after perinatal loss (2012) · cites this paper as [13]
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Metadata
- Authors
- Toedter, L. J., Lasker, J. N., & Janssen, H. J. E. M.
- Affiliations
- Moravian University (US)
- ORCID
- Lasker, Judith N.
- Venue
- Death Studies
- Publisher
- Informa UK Limited
- Published
- 2001-04-01
- Volume
- 25
- Issue
- 3
- Pages
- 205-228
- ISSN
- 0748-1187 (ISSN-L)
- 1091-7683
- OpenAlex
- W2157857104
- Cited by
- 207
- References
- 0
- Citations by year
- 2026: 7 · 2025: 4 · 2024: 10 · 2023: 26 · 2022: 7 · 2021: 10 · 2020: 13 · 2019: 12 · 2018: 5 · 2017: 8 · 2016: 10 · 2015: 9 · 2014: 4 · 2013: 9 · 2012: 11
- FWCI
- 4.46
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- closed
- Locations
- Death Studies (publishedVersion)
- PubMed (publishedVersion)
- Topics
- Social Sciences › Psychology › Clinical Psychology › Grief, Bereavement, and Mental Health
- Health Sciences › Medicine › Pediatrics, Perinatology and Child Health › Maternal and Neonatal Healthcare
- Health Sciences › Medicine › Public Health, Environmental and Occupational Health › Maternal Mental Health During Pregnancy and Postpartum
- Keywords
- Perinatal Grief Scale, perinatal loss, miscarriage, stillbirth, abortion, neonatal death, grief measurement, scale reliability, convergent validity, cross-national comparison, support groups
- MeSH terms
- Abortion, Spontaneous, Abortion, Induced, Adoption, Europe, Fathers, Female, Fetal Death, Grief, Humans, Infant, Newborn, Male, Mental Health, Mothers, Perinatology, Pregnancy, Psychometrics, United States
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