Developing and Measuring Psychometric Properties of “maternal role adaptation instrument in mothers of preterm infants admitted to the neonatal intensive care unit"

Introduction: Successful adaptation with maternal role leads to build confidence, and take  satisfaction from her ability in care and development of the infant. The present study was performed to develop a valid and reliable instrument  for evaluating maternal role adaptation in mothers of preterm infants in neonatal intensive care unit (NICU).

Methods: In this exploratory study; at first, the questionnaire with 101 items was developed using Semi-structured interviews with 17 mothers of preterm infants and literature review. Then, after several revisions by the research team, similar statements were merged and then the questionnaire was reduced to 45 statements. The developed instrument was validated using face, content, and constructs validity. For reliability of the instrument, we used the internal consistency and test-retest.

Results: During face validity 3 items were deleted and by using content validity index with cut-off point 0.79 and content validity ratio with cut-off point 0.42 were removed 7 other items and questionnaire was reduced to 35 items. Exploratory factor analysis identified six factors that explained 54% of variance. During construct validity 3 items were removed and final questionnaire was developed with 32 items. Chronbach's Alpha and intra class correlation coefficient were 0.77 and 0.81 respectively.

Conclusion: The "maternal role adaptation questionnaire in mothers of preterm infants admitted to the NICU” With six dimensions and 32 items is a valid and reliable instrument for assessing maternal role adaptation in mothers of preterm infants.