Exploratory Factor Analysis

Depression is a disorder that affects person’s mood, thoughts and behavior and is characterized by sadness, irritability, somatic complaints and accompanied cognitive changes1. The person loses concentration and develops feelings of guilt.2 Postpartum depression1 is the type of depression that occurs during pregnancy, after delivery or up to a year after delivery. Many bio-psycho-social factors contribute in the development of the postpartum depression in women resulting the postpartum blues, depression and psychosis.3Postpartum depression is much more common and prevalent in developing countries like Pakistan because of difficult life situations, stressed life events, lack of social support, low socioeconomic status4 and gender biasness

The informed consent was taken from the participants before giving instructions for filling in the questionnaires. They were assured about the confidentiality and anonymity of their responses.

RESULTS

Exploratory Factor Analysis (EFA): EFA with varimax rotation was carried out to identify the factor structure of Risk Factors for Postpartum Depression Scale. Only those factors were retained which had factor loading of .40 or above exclusively on one factor; factors have eigenvalues greater than 1 and are meaningfulness in relation to the underlying construct of the factor. Bartlett’s Test of Sphericity was used to check the assumption of normal distribution of responses. Kaiser Meyer Olkin test was employed to check adequacy of sample size.

The item analysis depicted that all the retained items showed had significant item-total correlation. Chronbach’s alpha for the total scale was highly significant i.e., .87 and for nine subscales it ranged from .50 to 90.

All the emerged factors were highly pertinent to Pakistani cultural context and these were labeled accordingly. The factors were labeled as “relationships with In-laws” indicating poor relationship with in-laws family, “lack of Social Support” during pregnancy by husband and family members of in-laws, “ Pregnancy related Concerns” that women have during pregnancy period. These factors contained items such as “My in-laws/husband used to express desire of the birth of a son” and “There had been continuously quarrels with in-laws” etc., “self-neuroticism” due to spending 9 months periods in fear and apprehension contained items such as “Due to pregnancy I always used to be afraid of some mishaps”; “Abortion History” for which women are always blamed for; “Difficulties during Pregnancy” for which family and husbands are least concerned; “Disturbed Marital Relation” due to husband’s demand for baby boys or other marital conflicts contained the items like ‘My husband used to beat me at the birth of baby girl”, “Problem Coping; coping strategies being used by women to cope with difficulties during pregnancy as well as marital life and “History of Depression” contained “I used to be gloomy before the birth of children” for having multiple pregnancies or other problems in marital