Validation and Refinement of the Short Version of Perinatal Grief Scale in Chinese Women Who Experience Perianal Loss: A Psychometric Study

Background The Short Version of the Perinatal Grief Scale (SVPGS) is a widely used scale of grief related to perinatal loss. This study aims to validate and refine the SVPGS among Chinese women experiencing perinatal loss by addressing its psychometric properties. Methods After translating the SVPGS from English to Chinese and conducting a pre-test with 20 end-users, followed by an assessment of content validity involving 10 experts, a cross-sectional study was conducted to assess its internal reliability and structure, concurrent, convergent, divergent, known-group validities among 353 women who have experienced perinatal loss across eight hospitals in Hunan Province, China. A subset of 275 participants were reassessed over a 1-month interval for the test-retest reliability. Results The refined 15-item SVPGS demonstrated excellent internal consistency (Cronbach's alpha = 0.92) and strong 1-month test-retest reliability (kappa = 0.83) compared to the original SVPGS. A three-factor structure consisting of 15 items was confirmed through item analysis, exploratory factor analysis, and parallel analysis. Confirmatory factor analysis further validated this structure, indicating a good fit for the refined SVPGS. Concurrent validity was supported by a large correlation between the SVPGS and refined SVPGS (r = 0.90, p < 0.01). Convergent and divergent validities were confirmed through significant correlations with variables including depressive symptoms, anxiety symptoms, and post-traumatic stress disorder, psychological flexibility, mindfulness, self-compassion, perceived social support, and quality of life. Known-group validation revealed significant differences in these variables between high and low levels of the refined SVPGS. Conclusions These findings indicate that the refined SVPGS is a brief, reliable, and valid tool for measuring grief in women who have experienced perinatal loss. Future research is strongly recommended to test the refined SVPGS across diverse samples and cultural contexts to enhance its generalizability.