Assessment of Postpartum Stress Using the Maternal Postpartum Stress Scale (MPSS) in SpanishWomen Martínez Vázquez, Sergio Ruíz Perete, Adrián de la Torre-Luque, Alejandro Nakic Radoš, Sandra Brekalo, Maja Amezcua Prieto, María Del Carmen Caparrós González, Rafael Arcángel maternal postpartum stress scale (MPSS) Spanish women surveys and questionnaires Although scales that evaluate postpartum stress exist, they lack specificity in maternal postpartum stress. The MPSS was created because there was a need to assess maternal stress during the postpartum stage. The introduction of the MPSS has enriched the evaluation tools for postpartum stress and has helped understand maternal stress at various postpartum time points and identify women at high risk for postpartum stress during this period. The aim was to translate the MPSS into Spanish and study its psychometric properties. Postpartum women (N = 167) with a mean age of 34.26 (SD = 4.71) were involved in this study. In addition to the MPSS, a battery of instruments was administered: a demographic sheet, the Birth Satisfaction Scale-Revised (BSS-R) and the Edinburgh Postnatal Depression Scale (EPDS). The MPSS data were analyzed, checking item communality first. As a result, three items showed unsatisfactory communality values (h2 < 0.40). Confirmatory Factor Analysis was conducted, comparing factor models using the full pool of MPSS items or the version without items with unacceptable communality. As a result, the original three-factor structure was endorsed on the Spanish MPSS, with better fit indices when removing items with low communality (RMSEA = 0.067, CFI = 0.99, TLI = 0.99). The reliability of this version was satisfactory (ω = 0.93). Finally, group comparisons for some perinatal variables were performed, showing no significant differences between groups of interest (p = 0.05 and above). To conclude, the MPSS will contribute to the existing literature, having a wider capacity to assess perinatal mental health difficulties in Spanish-speaking populations. 2024-07-22T10:12:33Z 2024-07-22T10:12:33Z 2024-05-16 journal article Martínez Vázquez, S. et. al. Healthcare 2024, 12, 1032. [https://doi.org/10.3390/healthcare12101032] https://hdl.handle.net/10481/93355 10.3390/healthcare12101032 eng http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ open access Atribución 4.0 Internacional MDPI