Psychometrics analysis of Bernan Couvade Syndrome Questionnaire in Fathers Expecting a Child

Pregnancy is associated with mental and physical changes in fathers expecting a child. Being aware of the signs and early diagnosis of the syndrome is essential for accepting fatherhood role and appropriate support of the wife during pregnancy. This study was performed with aim of psychometrics analysis of the Persian version of Couvade Brennan Syndrome questionnaire in fathers expecting a child.  

This methodological study was conducted in 2018. The Couvade-Brennan Syndrome questionnaire was translated into Persian using forward-backward translation after obtaining permission from its designer. After confirming the face and content validity, the final Persian version was filled by 200 fathers expecting child who met the inclusion criteria referred for antenatal care of their pregnant wives. Confirmatory and exploratory factor analysis was used to confirm construct validity of the tool. Its reliability was confirmed via Cronbach’s alpha and test-retest.

The results of exploratory factor analysis revealed two factors of physical signs and mental signs with 13 items for each factor. These factors explained 49% of the whole variance of answers. Goodness of fit indices in confirmatory factor analysis suggested the two-factor model had the best goodness of fit for the data. Given the cut-off point of 1.5 for item impact, face validity of all items was confirmed. Content validity ratio and Content validity inde were 0.64 and 0.92, respectively. Cronbach’s alpha of whole questionnaire was measured as 0.85 and the intraclass correlation coefficient was 0.88.

The results of psychometrics analysis of Persian version of Couvade-Brennan syndrome questionnaire showed acceptable reliability and validity of this tool for diagnosing of Couvade syndrome in father expecting a child.