Psychometric Properties of the Spanish Version of the Perceived Maternal Parenting Self-efficacy (PMP S-E) Tool for Primiparous Women.

OBJECTIVE: The objective of this study was to determine the validity and the reliability of the Perceived Maternal Parenting Self-Efficacy tool translated into Spanish and adapted to be used among primiparous women of term babies. METHODS: Validation study. A total of 210 women participated in the survey to establish construct validity and reliability. The questionnaire has 20 items and four subscales. The higher the score, the higher the self-efficacy. A process of translation/back-translation and cultural adaptation in accordance with international standards and an expert review were conducted to test face and content validity. The Validity Content Index and an exploratory factor analysis were used to identify the structure of the questionnaire. Reliability was estimated using Cronbach's alpha coefficient. RESULTS: Linguistic and cultural adaptation, validation and reliability were performed. Face validity for women was as follows: high comprehension (99%); and for experts: medium comprehension (84.1%), medium clarity (83.9%) and medium precision (80%). Concerning pertinence, the content validity index was 0.93 (i.e., highly pertinent). Concerning relevance, the content validity index was 0.96 (i.e., highly relevant). Factor validation identified four factors that accounted for 91% of the variance. Overall Cronbach's alpha value was 0.98 (IC 95 0.97-0.98). CONCLUSIONS FOR PRACTICE: Given the robust properties of the Spanish version of the Perceived Maternal Parenting Self-efficacy, it may be used to identify women with low self-efficacy and to assess the effectiveness of health-based interventions.

Neonatal Health Psychology [NNHP]: theories and practice.

By 1994, Health Psychology had been established as a discipline, and defined by Marie Johnston as the scientific study of the psychological processes and behaviour in health, illness and health care. Health Psychology, so far, has mainly related to the adult population, although increasing attention is now being paid to both pediatric and broadly-based child health psychology. It is noteworthy that attention devoted to pediatric and child health psychology has increased dramatically, but the great majority of published work refers to the child and not to the preterm neonate; yet being preterm means being born early, and sometimes too small, and is a stressful life event. In the field of Medicine, Neonatology has appeared as a sub-discipline, and both investigates and cares for at-risk babies, including risk for developmental disabilities. The time is consequently opportune for psychology to make an effective contribution to both the theory and care of the preterm neonate, viewed as a unique, emergent, coactional and hierarchical human being. The formal framework for this is Neonatal Health Psychology (NNHP), which is defined in the article as 'the scientific study of biopsychosocial and behavioural processes in health, illness, and health care of the preterm (and fullterm) neonate during his/her first 28 days of life, and the relationship of such processes with later outcome.' Early work in this category has shown that NNHP has profound interdisciplinary connotations, not least because of the diverse ways in which information has to be derived from the non-verbal neonates. The pathways and scope of NNHP are identified, and many examples of work with preterm neonates are summarised in the article. In making the case for the professional formalization of NNHP, descriptions are given of Neonatal Assessments and very-early interventions; the interdisciplinary character of much of the early work is shown to have been essential. Indication of theoretical frameworks for NNHP is given.

Grasping and fingering (active or haptic touch) in healthy newborns.

The traditional view that the activity of the baby's hands are triggered by a stimulus in an automatic, compulsory, stereotyped way and persisting view that fingering does not occur prior to 4 months of age, have led perception researchers to the assumption that the processing, encoding, and retainment of sensory information could not take place through the manual mode. This study aims to investigate whether fingering and different types of grasping occur before 3 months of age and can be modulated by surface texture of three objects. Using naturalistic observations, this small sample developmental study applied the AB experimental design to achieve aims above. Babies were video taped every week for 12 weeks. Three special manual stimuli were developed for this study. Focal sampling method with either zero-sampling or instantaneous sampling recording rules were used to analyse data with the Observer Video Pro. Each session comprising baseline and 3 experimental conditions lasted for four minutes. Fingering or 'proto fingering' as it is suggested in this article emerges as early as the first week of postnatal life; texture of a handled object modulates both 'proto-palm' and hand-grasp behaviour of healthy newborns. Results suggest that texture also modulates 'proto-fingering' and challenge persisting current assumption that fingering does not occur before four months of age, and further validates the phrase 'neo-haptic' touch to describe hands-on exploration of the newborn. The author suggests that some 'mental representation' of the stimulus is present during 'neo-haptic' recognition of the objects which is in accordance to a constructivist approach to (touch) perception.