Assessing mother‐to‐infant attachment: the Italian adaptation of a self‐report questionnaire

Abstract

The mother‐to‐infant relationship is usually assessed by behavioural observation. In order to evaluate mothers' emotional and cognitive response to their infants, Condon and Corkindale [(1998) The assessment of parent‐to‐infant attachment: development of a self‐report questionnaire instrument, Journal of Reproductive and Infant Psychology, 16, 57–76] have developed a self‐administered questionnaire. The aim of the present study is the Italian validation of the scale. The questionnaire contains 19 items each rated on a 5‐point scale. A sample of women with infants between 2 and 4 months of age were recruited at two postnatal wards in Genoa (Italy). Construct validity was assessed by administering two additional questionnaires: the Symptom Rating Test by Kellner and Sheffield and the Early Infancy Temperament Questionnaire by Medoff‐Cooper, Carey and Mc Devitt. A total of 210 women were evaluated. The distribution of scores tended to be skewed towards higher attachment scores and the range was 59 to 95. The mean of the total scale was 81.5 (SD=6.5) and Cronbach's alpha was 0.77. Attachment scores were negatively correlated with all the Symptom Rating Test subscales (r between −0.23 and −0.37; p<0.01). Mothers of children with difficult temperament had lower attachment scores (t=−2.780; p<0.01). Factor analysis revealed six factors which accounted for 57% of the variance. The psychometric properties of the Italian version of the scale were similar to those of the original version. The three‐factor structure found by Condon and Corkindale was not confirmed in the Italian version. The scores on the scale relate to other variables in a way that is consistent with attachment literature.