Apoio social em mães de bebês prematuros hospitalizados: elaboração e evidência de validade de um instrumento

Abstract

This thesis aims at elaborating and seeking evidence for validating a scale that evaluates social support to mothers of hospitalized preterm infants. Therefore, four studies were developed. Study I carried out a systematic review of literature that identified the five most used instruments for assessing social support. As a result, it was possible to establish a constitutive definition of a construct that focuses on perceived support, being understood as multidimensional. Study II carried out semi-structured interviews with 18 mothers accompanying preterm infants who were in the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit. The most prevalent categories regarding the support that the participants perceived as important to receive during hospitalization were information and emotional support. Based on the results found in Study I and on the interviews, the operational definition of social support was elaborated. Study III described the construction of the items and the judges’ analysis, where evidence of content validity was elaborated. Study IV applied the scale to 218 mothers of hospitalized preterm infants. Descriptive statistics, Cronbach's alpha, exploratory factorial analysis, ANOVA and Pearson's correlation tests were used for data analysis. The six dimensions of support identified by Cronbach's alpha and variability indices were, respectively: affective support (α = 0.904, 29.31%), material (α = 0.905, 10.25%); information(α = 0.90, 5.80% 1), emotional (α = 0.899, 4.10%),reception(α = 0.899, 3.75%) and care (α = 0.901, 3.56%). In addition, an overall alpha value of 0.92 was found. The scale for evaluating social support to mothers of hospitalized preterm neonates presented satisfactory and promising psychometric quality, with evidence of criterion validity, internal consistency and construct validity.