La calidad de la responsividad parentalcreación y validación de un instrumento observacional

Résumé

The attachment bond is a relational pattern that is established with a reference figure. It is especially characterized by the search for security and comfort in that figure. The caregiver's ability to respond to the child's needs was denominated maternal care by Ainsworth (1969). In the theoretical review of this work, new aspects of this maternal care have been collected and have been brought together under the label of quality of parental responsiveness. This construct, being essential for family intervention, does not have a complete, operative, systematic and validated measure. Therefore, the main objective of this work is to create and validate an observational measure to evaluate the quality of parental responsiveness. For this purpose, three different studies have been carried out. In the first study, aimed at evaluating the content validity of the instrument, 7 experts in attachment theory were asked to evaluate the relevance of the 42 items that had been created according to the definition of the construct. This study yielded good results on the content validity and only one of the proposed items was eliminated. The main objectives of the second study were to evaluate the internal validity of the instrument, to evaluate its reliability, to calculate the inter-rater reliability and to offer evidence on the criterion validity. Those analyses were performed with a sample of 50 participants. The internal structure was evaluated through an exploratory analysis (conglomerate analysis) and yielded 5 conglomerates. Only one did not offer good reliability. In addition, the inter-rater reliability is higher than 0.90 and the relationship with other variables such as parental anxiety, adult attachment style, parental stress and the child's symptomatology, support its criterion validity. In addition, a training was designed to teach the instrument and it was piloted with a sample of 9 specialized psychologists. As the results of study 3 show, the training is appropiate. Finally, it is concluded that the Quality of Parental Responsibility instrument offers, in general terms, adequate indexes of reliability and validity. It promises to be a useful tool in the evaluation of the quality of parental responsiveness for parents with children between 1 and 6 years old.