Abstract
Introduction: Mother-infant bonding describes the early emotional connectedness between a mother and her infant. The quality of the mother-infant bond early in life is related to the subsequent quality of the child's attachment, the quality of further mother-infant interactions, and various other social outcomes across the child's life span. The Recorded Interaction Task (RIT) was developed to assess mother-infant bonding using observational methods in a naturalistic but standardized setting, thus addressing shortcomings of previous self-report tools. The RIT focusses on the common interaction between mother and infant (aged 2 to 5 months old), during a diaper (nappy) change. The interaction is video recorded and later assessed. The RIT must be validated before it can be used to assess mother-infant bonding in future research or in clinical practice. Methods: Face and content validity of the RIT were assessed by a panel of 6 experts in bonding and assessment of maternal and infant behavior. The RIT and self-reported Postpartum Bonding Questionnaire (PBQ) were administered to 15 mother-infant dyads with the correlation between their scores used to assess convergent validity. Results: Acceptable face and content validity of the RIT was demonstrated. A weak correlation between the RIT and PBQ (r = −0.13) and their subscales (r = −0.22) were observed. A strong correlation between the RIT maternal behavior and infant behavior subscales was recorded (r = 0.69). Discussion: The RIT appears to be a viable tool for the observational assessment of mother-infant bonding. Reliability testing and piloting will be required before the RIT can be used in future research or clinical practice.
Original language | English |
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Pages (from-to) | 249-255 |
Number of pages | 7 |
Journal | Journal of Midwifery and Women's Health |
Volume | 66 |
Issue number | 2 |
DOIs | |
Publication status | Published - 1 Mar 2021 |
Externally published | Yes |
Keywords
- behavior observation techniques
- infant
- methods
- mother-child relations
- psychometrics
- reproducibility of results
- validation study