Psychosocial factors affecting uptake of prenatal genetic testing: a pilot study

OBJECTIVE: This study aims to explore the psychosocial factors which influenced the undergoing of prenatal genetic testing (PGT) in a sample of pregnant women. METHOD: An online questionnaire was emailed to a convenient sample of 105 pregnant women, recruited from among those attending two antenatal education programmes and via snowball sampling. RESULTS: A minority of respondents underwent chorionic villous sampling and amniocentesis (12 and 11, respectively). Advanced maternal age was related to undertaking PGT. The path analysis model (χ(2) (16, N = 97) = 19.01, ns; TLI = 0.95; RMSEA = 0.04; WRMR = 0.64) confirmed that three dimensions, namely having a more supporting attitude towards PGT (β = 0.54, p < 0.001), perceiving PGT as reliable (β = 0.29, p < 0.05) and the request for more scientific information (β = 0.22, p < 0.01), related to test uptaking. CONCLUSION: Empirical researches investigating pregnant women's beliefs and attitudes relating to actual test uptake could help genetic counsellors and policy makers to better understand their client's profile in relation to the determining factors affecting the undertaking of PGT