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Primary: Parenting, family assessment Secondary: None identified
Quality of parent-infant attachment.
To assess the quality of attachment between parent and infant.
This measure may be used to assess parent-infant attachment, as a pre-intervention assessment for programs in which attachment is an intended outcome, or as a post-intervention assessment for programs in which attachment is an intended outcome.
Parents ages 16 and up with children 1 to 24 months of age.
Additional information to inform measure use
Please note that the paternal version is known as the Paternal Postnatal Attachment Questionnaire (PPAQ)
MPAS: Quality of attachment (9 items), Absence of hostility (5 items), and Pleasure in interaction (5 items). PPAQ: Patience and tolerance, Pleasure in interaction, and Affection and pride.
5-point scale with anchor points that vary for each question (anchor points are described on the scale itself).
Information not indicated / not available at this time
None for self-report format. Qualifications required for administration of interview format are not indicated.
Scoring is done manually. Each item is scored from 1 to 5 (first response option is scored as 1, second as 2, etc.). Item totals are summed to obtain the scale score. Lower scores indicate lower attachment and vice-versa. Specific qualifications required for scoring and interpretation are not indicated. Both the MPAS and the PPAQ are scored in the same way.
The norms, reliability and validity statistics included in each measure profile are those reported by the author(s) of the measure. It is important to note that altering, adding or removing questions from a measure voids these reported statistics, possibly making the revised tool unreliable and invalid.
MPAS: Measure developed on a sample of women with male partners in Australia. The questionnaire was administered at 4 weeks, 4 months, and 8 months postnatally. Number of participants in the sample was 212, 210, and 202 for each time, respectively. PPAQ: The measure was developed on a sample of first-time fathers of infants in Australia. The measure was assessed at 6 and 12 months after the birth of their first child. The number of participants was 241 and 220 for each time, respectively.
MPAS: The authors report internal consistency reliabilities (alphas) of 0.78-0.79, a test-retest reliability of 0.86, and temporal stability coefficients of 0.48-0.67. A further study reported an alpha of 0.77.
PPAQ: The authors report internal consistency reliabilities (alphas) of 0.62-0.81, and temporal continuity correlation coefficients of 0.65-0.70.
MPAS: The authors report evidence of exemplary convergent validity. Further studies have reported evidence of discriminative validity and exemplary convergent validity.
PPAQ: The authors report evidence of exemplary convergent validity.
No copy available from the Knowledge Institute. Contact author or publisher.
Free.
Dr. John T. Condon School of Medicine Flinders University GPO Box 2100 Adelaide 5001 South Australia E-mail: john.condon@flinders.edu.au
None at this time
Condon, J.T., & Corkindale, J. C. (1998). The assessment of parent-to-infant attachment: Development of a self-report questionnaire instrument. Journal of Reproductive and Infant Psychology, 16(1), 57-76.
Condon, J.T., Corkindale, C. J., & Boyce, P. (2008). Assessment of postnatal paternal-infant attachment: Development of a questionnaire instrument. Journal of Reproductive & Infant Psychology, 26(3), 195-210.
Perry, D.F., Ettinger, A.K., Mendelson, T., & Le, H.N. (2011). Prenatal depression predicts postpartum maternal attachment in low-income Latina mothers with infants. Infant Behavior and Development, 34(2), 339-350.
Quinlivan, J.A., & Evans, S.F. (2005). Impact of domestic violence and drug abuse in pregnancy on maternal attachment and infant temperament in teenage mothers in the setting of best clinical practice. Archives of Women's Mental Health, 8(3), 191-199.
Scopesi, A., Viterbori, P., Sponza, S., & Zucchinetti, P. (2004). Assessing mother-to-infant attachment: The Italian adaptation of a self-report questionnaire. Journal of Reproductive & Infant Psychology, 22(2), 99-109.
