Despite substantial interest in the effects of stress on pregnancy, few instruments
are available to measure pregnancy-specific stressors. Moreover, research has
typically focused on the distressing, negative aspects of pregnancy. This report
examines the reliability and validity of the Pregnancy Experience Scale (PES), a 41-
item scale that measures pregnancy-specific daily hassles and uplifts. The PES was
administered to two cohorts of low risk women at 24, 30, and 36 weeks (n = 52) or
32 and 38 weeks (n = 137). Women perceived their pregnancies to be significantly
more intensely and frequently uplifting than hassling. Internal scale reliability was
high (a = 0.91 to 0.95). Frequency and intensity scores for hassles and uplifts were
stable over time (r’s = 0.56 to 0.83) and patterns of convergent and discriminant
validity emerged between the PES and existing measures of general affective
intensity, daily stressors, depressive symptoms, and anxiety. These results indicate
that (1) failure to measure pregnancy-specific stress will underestimate the degree
to which pregnant women experience distress and (2) measurement of only the
negative aspects of pregnancy will overestimate distress and fail to portray the
degree to which women are psychologically elevated by their pregnancies.
Measurement of hassles relative to uplifts may provide the most balanced
assessment of pregnancy appraisal