Miscarriages can cause a significant impact on the psychological and emotional well being of many women, with considerable distress adversely affecting the quality of life. The Impact of Events Scale-Revised (IES-R) was designed to assess the current subjective psychological distress for any specific life event and psychological response patterns associated with such experiences. The objective of this study was to validate a Sinhala translation of IES-R questionnaire to assess the psychological distress among a group of Sri Lankan women following miscarriage. This validation study was conducted in the Galle district at the Gynecology ward of the Teaching Hospital Mahamodara, including 106 women who were diagnosed with miscarriage. The original IES-R was translated into Sinhala language and judgmental validity was ensured by an expert panel. Appropriate analyses both at the item and scale levels were conducted to assess the validity and reliability. Convergent validity was calculated between the total IES-R score and the total GHQ score, which provided a statistically significant correlation of 0.66 (p < 0.01). Construct validity demonstrated item scale correlations exceeding 0.4 with its own scale, and confirmatory factor analysis supported the three-factor model similar to its original three subscales with good fit indices (Intrusion, Avoidance and Hyperarousal). The Sinhala IES-R also demonstrated a good internal consistency with Cronbach’s alpha value for the whole score (0.91) and for its 3 subscales (ranging from 0.78 to 0.83). The test - retest reliability of three subscales showed satisfactory correlation coefficients exceeding 0.9, although the retest was done in a sample of 15 women after 2.7 days. The Sinhala version of the IES-R has satisfactory validity and reliability to asses psychological distress among Sri Lankan group of women following miscarriage.
2022-09-01.
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