Primary Appraisal of Infertility: Evaluation of the Psychometric Properties of a Greek Version of the Appraisal of Life Events Scale (ALE) in a Sample of Infertile Women Undergoing Fertility Treatment

Abstract

The Appraisal of Life Events is a self-report questionnaire that can be used retrospectively, asking respondents to reflect on the impact of a previously experienced event. The aim of this study was to examine the psychometric properties of the Greek version of the Appraisal of Life Events scale. The sample consisted of 137 women facing fertility problems and undergoing fertility treatment in a public hospital in Athens, Greece. The Appraisal of Life Events was ‘forward-backward’ translated from English to Greek language and was then pilot-tested to determine comprehensibility. Factor structure was investigated using exploratory factor analysis. Measures of stress (infertility-related stress, anxiety, depressive symptoms, mood states), personality traits (neuroticism, extraversion, optimism) and coping strategies were used to assess the convergent validity of the Appraisal of Life Events. Cronbach's α was used to measure internal consistency reliability. Two Appraisal of Life Events factors emerged from exploratory factor analysis. The threat and loss items were grouped together to form one factor. The original subscale of the challenge appraisal was reproduced. Convergent validity was confirmed by computing correlations between the two derived Appraisal of Life Events scales and the measures of stress, personality traits, and coping strategies. Internal consistency reliability was satisfactory (α = .79−.95). The Appraisal of Life Events had a meaningful factor structure and satisfactory reliability and convergent validity.