Avaliação do laço mãe e bebê: elaboração e construção de instrumento e estudos de evidência de validade

Abstract

This is a multi-methods research, with the objective of studying the establishment of the mother and baby relationship, and build a verification tool of it from the maternal perspective. The thesis is composed by three studies: the first one aimed to characterize the content of the mothers' perception about the relationship between mother and baby, through six interviews with mothers of different educational attainment. The contents of the interviews were treated by Lexical Analysis of the Alceste software, verifying three classes, 55% (Class 1), 26% (Class 2) and 19% (class 3) of the corpus, suggesting a focus of attention on the basic care. The maternal educational attainment may be an intervening factor in motherhood, and in the mother’s dynamics with her baby, influencing both the bond narrative style as the form of care. In the second study, the objective was to design and build an instrument to assess the mother and child relationship from the maternal perspective. One started from theoretical and empirical sources in order to identify and characterize the construct Mother and Baby Bond in dynamic-relational aspects. One developed an instrument of 92 items with dichotomous alternatives given to mothers of babies up to 18 months. The results generated an instrument that includes the main manifestations of child development in four periods from zero to 18 months. The third study sought to verify, through the Principal Component Analysis (PAF), the factor structure of the instrument highlighting 34 factors about the child development processes, and their maternal perception. Although the generated factors are promising, it was decided to maintain the theoretical dimensions originally proposed that served as headquarters for the organization of items. Reliability presented an acceptable index for the questionnaire concerning the baby (KR- 20 0.92) and the relevant issues to mother (KR-20 0.71). As conclusion, there is the possibility of following this work, with a view to further researches, in order to come to be effectively used as an instrument for early intervention.