Abstract
A brief, reliable, and valid measure of postpartum fatigue in both clinical and research settings is much needed. This study assessed the psychometric properties of the Fatigue Severity Scale (FSS) among women with unsettled infants and fatigue. Rasch analysis identified an overall ceiling effect for the original FSS, as well as disordered response categories and/or poor fit for 4 items. A modified 5-item version of the FSS (FSS-5R) had improved psychometric properties.
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Acknowledgements
The authors are grateful to the staff at Masada Private Hospital Mother Baby Unit for their collaboration in implementing this study: Olivia Chung, Hilary Brown, and Hannah Gray for assisting with data collection and to the women who most generously contributed data. NW was supported by an Australian Government Research Training Program Scholarship, KW was supported by a Monash University Advancing Women’s Research Success grant, and JF was supported by a Monash Professorial Fellowship and the Jean Hailes Professorial Fellowship, which is supported by a grant to the Jean Hailes Foundation from the H and L Hecht Trust managed by Perpetual Trustees.
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Mr. Wilson has nothing to disclose. Dr. Wynter has nothing to disclose. Dr. Fisher reports personal fees from Masada Private Hospital, which is owned by Ramsay Healthcare, other from Jean Hailes for Women’s Health, during the conduct of the study; Dr. Bei has nothing to disclose.
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All procedures performed in studies involving human participants were in accordance with the ethical standards of the institutional and/or national research committee and with the 1964 Helsinki declaration and its later amendments or comparable ethical standards.
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Informed consent was obtained from all individual participants included in the study.
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Wilson, N., Wynter, K., Fisher, J. et al. Postpartum fatigue: assessing and improving the psychometric properties of the Fatigue Severity Scale. Arch Womens Ment Health 21, 471–474 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00737-018-0818-1
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00737-018-0818-1