Neonatal Eating Outcome Assessment: tool development and inter‐rater reliability

Abstract

The 'total' score had good to excellent reliability. Fleiss' Kappa scores for all 18 scorable items ranged from slight agreement to moderate agreement. Items with the lowest Kappa scores were revised, and additional feedback from therapists engaged in reliability testing was incorporated, resulting in final version 5.

Interrater Reliability and Concurrent Validity of the Neonatal Eating Outcome Assessment

“…The key findings of this study are that the Neonatal Eating Outcome Assessment has excellent reliability and that concurrent validity was established through the Neonatal Eating Outcome Assessment's relationship with the NOMAS. The excellent reliability of the Neonatal Eating Outcome Assessment is consistent with the previously published study assessing the reliability of Version 4 of the Neonatal Eating Outcome Assessment (Pineda et al, 2018). Although excellent reliability on the total Neonatal Eating Outcome Assessment score was observed, some of the individual items that make up the assessment had less optimal reliability, such as swallow, quality of movements, and tone.…”

“…To determine concurrent validity, a cohort of 52 preterm infants who were born ≤32 wk gestation, without congenital anomalies, and enrolled by the first week of life was used. Infants were part of two overarching studies (Pineda et al, 2018(Pineda et al, , 2019 in which infants had a full feeding video recorded at term-equivalent age (36-41 wk PMA) before NICU discharge. Video recordings of feeding were conducted with a lateral view of the infant's mouth and jaw.…”

Pacifier use in newborns: related to socioeconomic status but not to early feeding performance

“…The total score for the assessment ranges from 18 to 90, with higher scores indicating optimal performance. The assessment has content validity and good to excellent reliability (28), and the assessment scores and the length of time the infant actively engaged in oral feeding were used as the feeding outcome measures.…”

Neonatal Eating Assessment Tool - Mixed Breastfeeding and Bottle-Feeding (NeoEAT - Mixed Feeding): factor analysis and psychometric properties

“…Three of these tools were excluded because they did not have adequate published literature for evaluation of the tool: B-R-E-A-S-T-Feed Observation Form [10], Infant Nipple Feeding Assessment and Communication Tool [11], and the Via Christi Breastfeeding Assessment [12]. Four additional tools were excluded because their use is limited to specific diagnoses: the Feeding Checklist (infants with non-organic failure to thrive) [13], the Infant Malnutrition and Feeding Checklist for Congenital Heart Disease (infants with congenital heart disease) [14], the Nutrition and Feeding Risk Identification Tool (infants in Early Intervention care) [15] and the Neonatal Eating Outcome (NEO) Assessment (premature infants) [16]. The Infant and Child Feeding Questionnaire (ICFQ) was excluded because it is an anticipatory guidance and engagement tool intended to facilitate effective conversations between caregivers and providers, but is not intended to be used as an assessment tool for the purposes of clinical decision-making [17].…”