Alteration of Thoughts During Pregnancy; Translation and Validation of Automatic Thought Questionnaire Revised

Abstract

Assessing negative thoughts during pregnancy enables early identification of psychological distress, preventing adverse maternal-fetal outcomes. The primary objective of this study was to translate and validate the Automatic Thoughts Questionnaire-Revised (ATQ-R) in Urdu language for Pakistani population so it can be utilized for antenatal screening in low resource settings. Through convenient sampling, the sample of 440 pregnant women (220 working and 220 non-working) taken from Private and Government hospitals and clinics of the Rawalpindi and Islamabad. The Exploratory and Confirmatory analyses were conducted through SPSS-24 and AMOS, respectively. The result depicted that Automatic thought Questionnaire Revised–Urdu (ATQ-RU) has sound psychometric properties (α=0.91), p<0.001. The Automatic Thought Questionnaire (ATQ) is a psychometrically valid and reliable tool for assessing the negative automatic thoughts among pregnant women.