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BMC Psychiatry
Published in: BMC Psychiatry 1/2013

Open Access 01-12-2013 | Research article

The psychometric properties of the subscales of the GHQ-28 in a multi-ethnic maternal sample: results from the Born in Bradford cohort

Authors: Stephanie L Prady, Jeremy NV Miles, Kate E Pickett, Lesley Fairley, Karen Bloor, Simon Gilbody, Kathleen Kiernan, Rachel Mann, John Wright

Published in: BMC Psychiatry | Issue 1/2013

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Abstract

Background

Poor maternal mental health can impact on children’s development and wellbeing; however, there is concern about the comparability of screening instruments administered to women of diverse ethnic origin.

Methods

We used confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) and exploratory factor analysis (EFA) to examine the subscale structure of the GHQ-28 in an ethnically diverse community cohort of pregnant women in the UK (N = 5,089). We defined five groups according to ethnicity and language of administration, and also conducted a CFA between four groups of 1,095 women who completed the GHQ-28 both during and after pregnancy.

Results

After item reduction, 17 of the 28 items were considered to relate to the same four underlying concepts in each group; however, there was variation in the response to individual items by women of different ethnic origin and this rendered between group comparisons problematic. The EFA revealed that these measurement difficulties might be related to variation in the underlying concepts being measured by the factors.

Conclusions

We found little evidence to recommend the use of the GHQ-28 subscales in routine clinical or epidemiological assessment of maternal women in populations of diverse ethnicity.
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Metadata
Title
The psychometric properties of the subscales of the GHQ-28 in a multi-ethnic maternal sample: results from the Born in Bradford cohort
Authors
Stephanie L Prady
Jeremy NV Miles
Kate E Pickett
Lesley Fairley
Karen Bloor
Simon Gilbody
Kathleen Kiernan
Rachel Mann
John Wright
Publication date
01-12-2013
Publisher
BioMed Central
Published in
BMC Psychiatry / Issue 1/2013
Electronic ISSN: 1471-244X
DOI
https://doi.org/10.1186/1471-244X-13-55

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