Validation of the attitudes towards the infant's crying scale

Pediatric abusive head trauma (AHT) is a type of child maltreatment which consists in shaking a baby violently. AHT may lead to serious consequences for child development, including death. The literature points out some... [ view full abstract ]

Pediatric abusive head trauma (AHT) is a type of child maltreatment which consists in shaking a baby violently. AHT may lead to serious consequences for child development, including death. The literature points out some programs for AHT prevention, but none of them use validated instruments in its assessment, which hampers the interpretation and the generalization of results. The aim of this study was to describe the development and validation of a scale to assess knowledge on AHT. The Attitudes towards the Infant’s Crying Scale, built after a review of pre-existing literature and its scales, was administered to 500 parents of children less than 2 years of age or during mother´s gestational period. Participants were mostly women (84%) and married (86%). Participant’s mean age was 29 years, and their mean monthly income was US$ 19.723,56 (middle-high class in Brazil). Participants had studied for 14 years in average, and they answered the scale online or in person at public and private Health Units. The scale was submitted to exploratory factor analysis in main components with varimax rotation. The final scale version consisted of 50 items divided into six components: 1) Consequences of Shaking; 2) Caregiver Wellbeing; 3) Strategies to deal with Crying related to the Baby; 4 )Strategies to deal with Crying related to Caregiver; 5) Negative Aspects of Baby Care, and 6) Characteristics of the Infant’s Crying. All subscales have good internal consistency indices, in addition to meeting relevant theoretical dimensions of the literature. The scale has since been used successfully to assess an AHT prevention program in Brazil.