Scale Validation: The Couple in Light of the Birth and Upbringing of a Child with High Risk in Mexico

Abstract

Introduction:The birth of a high risk child leads to a disruption of psychic processes in the couple due to the morbidity of the neonate, the hospital environment, and an initial long separation from a child with a risk of death, anomalies or sequels. This acquires a traumatic nature, and has persistent emotional effects and symptoms on the couple. After hospital discharge, stress in relation to the child's health slightly decreases and stress related to parenting and daily chores increases. In a couple's relationship, it is common to find insecurity caused by experiences during the perinatal period, as well as all the challenges that must be faced. This activates psychological resources allowing for couple negotiations, understood as communication processes that take place in different settings: the division of domestic chores, parenting, sexuality, control of money and materials, time, personal space and the equilibrium of the couple with other social and affectionate relationships, as well as opportunities for dialogue, mechanisms to establish rules, relationship conditions and difficulties generated by these processes. The above highlights the importance of creating instruments to understand the experience of the couple under these circumstances.Objective: To create and validate an instrument to measure the couple facing a high risk birth and upbringing in Mexico. Materials and Methods:The sample consisted of 372 participants living as a couple, with children with a high risk birth, who attended the Pediatric Follow-up at the National Institute of Perinatology (INPer), with an age µ= 34.46 (SD = 7.87). In an exploratory study using focus groups, the most frequent indicators found were expressed as Likert 5-point statements. Ethical concerns for the investigation with human subjects were considered. The method used for psychometric analysis was the one suggested by Reyes-Lagunes and Garcia- Barragan (2008). For validation, the exploratory factor analysis with orthogonal rotation (Varimax) was used. Results:The scale presents Bartlett's test of sphericity of 4924.824 and a Kaiser-Meyer-Olkin (KMO) sample fitness index with a value of 0.941, indicating a satisfactory factor analysis. As a result of the 7 interactions of the factor analysis, 3 groups of factors were assembled: Positive affection towards the partner, asynchrony and negative communication towards agreements and synchrony and positive communication towards agreements; these explain 51.15% of the total variance and a global Cronbach's alfa of 0.808. Correlations between factors were low to moderate and significant, proving the adequate construct validity of the scale. Conclusion:The design and validation of this instrument allows the observation of the phenomenon, understanding the experience of couples with children with a high risk birth and their upbringing from a familiar and social perspective according to the characteristics of the instrument. This scale will be useful for future investigations.