Psychometric Properties of the Online Version of the General Anxiety Disorder-7 (GAD-7): A Longitudinal Study in Pregnant and Postpartum Spanish Women.

BACKGROUND

The use of online questionnaires to assess common mental disorders such as perinatal anxiety has spread due to the proliferation of Internet-based psychological interventions and research. This study analyses the validity and reliability of the online version of the Generalized Anxiety Disorder-7 (GAD-7) in a sample of pregnant and postpartum Spanish women.

METHOD

A total of 3082 pregnant (n = 1260) and postpartum (n = 1822) women were recruited via the Internet and underwent three follow-up evaluations during a six-month period.

RESULTS

A one-factor solution was assigned by Exploratory Factor Analysis and confirmed by Confirmatory Factor Analysis for both pregnant (CFI = 0.998; RMSEA = 0.035) and postpartum (CFI = 0.998; RMSEA = 0.038) women. The one-factor model showed strict invariance across groups. Validity was confirmed by assessing correlations between GAD-7, the Edinburgh Postnatal Depression Scale, and the 10-item Posttraumatic Stress Disorder checklist at three time points. The reliability coefficient was .92 for the two groups.

CONCLUSIONS

This study shows that the Spanish online GAD-7 version has good psychometric properties and can be used to assess anxiety symptoms during the perinatal period.