The Development of The Mother-To-Infant Attachment Questionnaire (MIAQ) For Newborns’ Mothers Admitted to The Neonatal Intensive Care Unit (NICU)
Article Sidebar
Main Article Content
Abstract
This developmental study aimed to develop the Mother-to-Infant Attachment Questionnaire (MIAQ) and to assess its appropriateness and basic measurement qualities for evaluating maternal attachment among mothers whose newborns were admitted to a Neonatal Intensive Care Unit (NICU). The research was conducted in two phases: (1) questionnaire development and content validation by five experts, and (2) preliminary testing with 30 mothers selected through convenience sampling based on pre-defined criteria. The results showed that the developed questionnaire demonstrated high content validity and acceptable reliability, with a Cronbach’s alpha coefficient of 0.88 for all 26 items. The alpha coefficients when each item was deleted ranged from 0.87 to 0.88, and item-total correlations ranged from 0.30 to 0.58. The MIAQ was found to be appropriate for contexts where mothers are unable to provide continuous care for their infants, such as in NICU settings with time and health-related constraints. By reflecting maternal perceptions and emotions directly, this tool can offer preliminary insight into maternal-infant attachment and provide a foundation for supporting early bonding between mothers and their newborns.
Article Details
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
บทความที่ได้รับการตีพิมพฺเป็นลิขสิทธิ์ของวารสาร
References
Ainsworth, M. D. S., Blehar, M. C., Waters, E., & Wall, S. (1978). Patterns of attachment: A psychological study of the strange situation. Lawrence Erlbaum.
Boateng, G. O., Neilands, T. B., Frongillo, E. A., Melgar-Quiñonez, H. R., & Young, S. L. (2018). Best practices for developing and validating scales for health, social, and behavioral research: A primer. Frontiers in Public Health, 6, 149. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpubh.2018.00149
Bowlby, J. (1969). Attachment and loss: Vol. 1. Attachment. Basic Books.
Bowlby, J. (2014). Attachment and loss: Vol. 1. Attachment (2nd ed.). Basic Books.
Burns, N., & Grove, S. K. (2001). The practice of nursing research: Conduct, critique and utilization (4th ed.). Saunders.
Bryman, A. (2016). Social research methods (5th ed.). Oxford University Press.
Chen, C. J., Sung, H. C., Chen, Y. C., Chang, C. Y., & Lee, M. S. (2013). The development and psychometric evaluation of the Chinese version of the maternal attachment inventory. Journal of Clinical Nursing, 22(19–20), 2687–2695.
Christian, M. S. (2017). Pediatric nursing: Theories, research, and practice. Pearson Education.
Condon, J. T., & Corkindale, C. J. (1998). The correlates of paternal involvement in infant care. Child Development, 69(1), 67–77.
Damato, E. G. (2004). Maternal attachment to infant: An exploration of theory and research. National League for Nursing.
DeVellis, R. F. (2017). Scale development: Theory and applications (4th ed.). SAGE Publications.
Field, A. (2018). Discovering statistics using IBM SPSS statistics (5th ed.). SAGE Publications.
Flacking, R., Lehtonen, L., Thomson, G., Axelin, A., Ahlqvist, S., Moran, V. H., ... & SCENE group. (2012). Closeness and separation in neonatal intensive care. Acta Paediatrica, 101(10), 1032-1037.
George, C. (2014). The development of attachment theory in the context of modern science. Clinical Psychology Review, 34(3), 220–227.
Li, L., Yin, H., & Tan, J. (2020). Study on the status quo and influencing factors of mother-infant attachment in NICU premature infants during hospitalization. Journal of Nursing Science.
Mäkelä, H., Axelin, A., Feeley, N., & Niela-Vilén, H. (2018). Clinging to closeness: the parental view on developing a close bond with their infants in a NICU. Midwifery, 62, 183-188.
Muller, M. (1994). Attachment in infancy and early childhood: A theoretical and empirical review. Infant Mental Health Journal, 15(3), 199–211.
Polit, D. F., & Beck, C. T. (2008). Nursing research: Generating and assessing evidence for nursing practice. Lippincott Williams & Wilkins.
Shin, H., & Kim, Y. H. (2007). Maternal Attachment Inventory: Psychometric evaluation of the Korean version. Journal of Advanced Nursing, 59(3), 299–307.
Wittkowski, A., Vatter, S., Muhinyi, A., Garrett, C., & Henderson, M. (2020). Measuring bonding or attachment in the parent-infant-relationship: A systematic review of parent-report assessment measures, their psychometric properties and clinical utility. Clinical Psychology Review, 82, 101906. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cpr.2020.101906
