Abstract
BACKGROUND: Maternal-fetal attachment has not been formally studied among pregnant Indian women using Cranley's 24-item maternal-fetal attachment scale. OBJECTIVE: The purpose of this study was to validate the Cranley's 24-item maternal-fetal attachment scale (MFAS-24). METHODS: Consecutive pregnant Indian women of all trimesters were studied in Pondicherry, India. STATISTICAL ANALYSIS: The mean, standard deviation (SD), Cronbach's alpha, content validity index (CVI), correlation coefficient, and simple correlation analyses were calculated. RESULTS: 230 pregnant women of various sociodemographic, religious and educational background formed the sample. Mean age of sample was 23 (SD ± 3) years, mean MFAS scores was 87.4 (SD ± 10), mean GHQ scores was 14 (SD ± 1.2), and mean gestational age was 27.2 (SD ± 7) weeks. Cronbach's reliability alpha of MFAS was high (0.71). There was no correlation between MFAS scores and gestational age or the pregnancy trimester. CVI of the scale, for the Tamil version was 0.72 and for the English version was 0.78. CONCLUSIONS: This study shows applicability of MFAS-24 in Indian settings also for measuring maternal-fetal attachment.