Two methodological issues in the psychological study of in vitro fertilization/embryo transfer participants

Objective measures are needed to quantify anxiety experienced by in vitro fertilization/embryo transfer participants in order to evaluate the effects of anxiety on participation and outcome. Despite the importance of determining such measures, it has proven difficult to identify psychological assessments effective in this health care group. Two methodological reasons may account in part for this: (a) this normal psychologic population requires a sensitive measure of anxiety in order to detect distress yet measures of major psychopathology have been previously used, and (b) participant self-report has generally been elicited to assess anxiety yet self-report requires participants to be aware of their level of anxiety and be willing to report it. The current paper presents data using an empirical measure which is appropriate for a normal population and is not based on direct self-report alone, thus eliminating 2 potential sources of inaccuracy in the measurement of anxiety and proposing a methodologically sound technique for quantifying distress in this group.