Premium
The development and reliability of an observational tool for assessing mother–child interactions in field studies‐ experience from Pakistan
Author(s) -
Rasheed M. A.,
Yousafzai A. K.
Publication year - 2015
Publication title -
child: care, health and development
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.832
H-Index - 82
eISSN - 1365-2214
pISSN - 0305-1862
DOI - 10.1111/cch.12287
Subject(s) - observational study , toddler , bayley scales of infant development , psychology , developmental psychology , affect (linguistics) , child development , clinical psychology , cognition , medicine , psychomotor learning , psychiatry , communication , pathology
Summary Background This study describes the development and reliability testing of an observational tool to measure mother–child interactions with toddlers aged 2 years in a rural low‐income country setting. Methods The development protocol comprised five phases with iterative revisions: (1) identification of the theoretical framework for responsive behaviours and selection of items; (2) field testing; (3) expert review; (4) training of the data collection team; and (5) piloting. The final tool was a structured live observational measure assessing a 5‐min interaction of a shared picture‐book‐reading activity. Maternal behaviours assessed included affect, touch, verbal statements and language stimulation; child behaviours assessed included affect, communication and attention. Results Following development, the mother–child interaction tool was administered on a cohort of 1390 children at 2 years of age. Using a video strategy, inter‐observer reliability assessed by the Bland–Altman test for mother–child dyads suggested moderate agreement between expert and field assessors on total scores ( r = 0.681**, P < 0.001, n = 154). Significant associations of the total interaction score correlations using Pearson's' correlations were found with the Responsiveness ( r = 0.271**, P < 0.001, n = 1345) and Involvement ( r = 0.325**, P < 0.001, n = 1345) subscales of the Home Observation for Measurement of Environment‐Infant Toddler Inventory, maternal knowledge ( r = 0.203**, P < 0.001, n = 1345), maternal depression ( r = .‐063**, P < 0.001, n = 1345), child cognitive development ( r = 0.392**, P < 0.001, n = 1345) and language development ( r = 0.620**, P < 0.001, n = 1345) assessed using the Bayley Scales for Infant and Toddler Development, Third Edition. Conclusion The authors conclude that this tool can be reliably used by trained assessors to measure mother–child interactions in field studies.