Caregiving Helplessness Questionnaire (CHQ) applied to Portuguese mothers of preschool-aged children: A psychometric study
Abstract
The child’s attachment system is complemented by a separate and reciprocal caregiving system in the parent, which guides parents’ protective responses to the child. Disruptions in the caregiving system may lead to disorganized caregiving; however, the study and knowledge of disorganized caregiving is still very incomplete and has been limited to labor-intensive and costly interviews. This study aimed to examine the psychometric qualities of the Caregiving Helplessness Questionnaire (CHQ), a screening tool for disorganized caregiving, on a sample of 200 Portuguese mothers of preschool-aged children. Confirmatory factor analysis did not confirm the structure of the original CHQ version. A five-factor solution was found as a better solution, producing five scales that correspond conceptually to major dimensions of relationship disorganization at preschool-age: Mother Helpless, Mother Frightened, Child Frightened, Child Cheers Mothers, and Child Caregiving. Reliability analysis had satisfactory results and convergent and discriminant validity were confirmed. Concurrent validity was also established by finding significant associations between the CHQ scales with variables of maternal and child domains that have been conceptually and empirically associated with disorganization. In conclusion, results supported the validity of the CHQ for Portuguese mothers of preschoolers, as a promising screening tool for disorganized caregiving.
Keywords
Full Text:
PDFReferences
Achenbach, T. M., & Rescorla, L. A. (2000). Manual for ASEBA Preschool Forms & Profiles. Burlington: University of Vermont.
Achenbach, T., Rescorla, L., Dias, P., Ramalho, V., Lima, V. S., Machado, B. C., & Gonçalves, M. (2014). Manual of the Achenbach System of Empirically Based Assessment (ASEBA) to preschool and school ages. Braga: Psiquilíbrios.
Ainsworth, M. D. S., Blehar, M. C., Waters, E., & Wall, S. (1978). Patterns of attachment: A psychological study of the strange situation. Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum.
Bowlby, J. (1980). Attachment and loss: Vol. 3. Loss - Sadness and depression. New York: Basic Books.
Bowlby, J. (1982). Attachment and loss: Vol. 1. Attachment. New York: Basic Books.
Bronfman, E., Madigan, S., & Lyons-Ruth, K. (2008). Atypical Maternal Behavior Instrument for Assessment and Classification (AMBIANCE): Manual for coding disrupted affective communication (2nd ed.). Unpublished manual, Harvard University Medical School.
Canavarro, M. C. (1999). Inventário de sintomas psicopatológicos: BSI. In M. R. Simões, M. Gonçalves, & L. S. Almeida (Eds.), Testes e provas psicológicas em Portugal (vol. II, pp. 87-109). Braga: SHO/APPORT.
Carlson, E. (1998). A prospective longitudinal study of attachment disorganization/disorientation. Child Development, 69, 1197-1128. doi: 10.2307/1132365
Cyr, C., Euser, E. M., Bakermans-Kranenburg, M. J., & Van IJzendoorn, M. H. (2010). Attachment security and disorganization in maltreating and high-risk families: A series of meta-analyses. Development and Psychopathology, 22, 87-108. doi: 10.1017/S0954579409990289
Derogatis, L. R., & Melisaratos, N. (1983). The Brief Symptom Inventory: An introductory report. Psychological Medicine, 13, 595-605. doi: 10.1017/S0033291700048017
Dutra, L., Bureau, J., Holmes, B., Lyubchik, A., & Lyons-Ruth, K. (2009). Quality of early care and childhood trauma: A prospective study of developmental pathways to dissociation. The Journal of Nervous and Mental Disease, 197, 383-390. doi: 10.1097/NMD.0b013e3181a653b7
Fornell, C., & Larcker, D. F. (1981). Evaluating structural equation models with unobservable variables and measurement errors. Journal of Marketing Research, 18, 39-50. doi: 10.2307/3151312
George, D., & Mallery, P. (2003). SPSS for Windows step by step: A simple guide and reference - 11.0 update (4th ed.). Boston: Allyn & Bacon.
George, C., & Solomon, J. (1989). Internal working models of caregiving and security of attachment at age six. Infant Mental Health Journal, 10, 222-237. Retrieved from http://dx.doi.org/10.1002/1097-0355(198923)10:3<222::AID-IMHJ2280100308>3.0.CO;2-6
George, C., & Solomon, J. (1996). Representational models of relationships: Links between caregiving and attachment. Infant Mental Health Journal, 17, 198-216. Retrieved from https://doi.org/10.1002/(SICI)1097-0355(199623)17:3<198::AID-IMHJ2>3.0.CO;2-L
George, C., & Solomon, J. (2008). The caregiving system: A behavioral systems approach to parenting. In J. Cassidy & P. R. Shaver (Eds.), Handbook of attachment: Theory, research, and clinical applications (2nd ed., pp. 833-856). New York: Guilford Press.
George, C., & Solomon, J. (2011). Caregiving helplessness: The development of a screening measure for disorganized maternal caregiving. In J. Solomon & C. George (Eds.), Disorganized attachment and caregiving (pp. 133-166). New York: Guilford Press.
Hair, J. F., Black, W. C., Babin, B. J., & Anderson, R. E. (2010). Multivariate data analysis (7th ed.). Upper Saddle River: Pearson Prentice Hall.
Henseler, J., Ringle, C. M., & Sarstedt, M. (2015). A new criterion for assessing discriminant validity in variance-based structural equation modeling. Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science, 43, 115-135. doi: 10.1007/s11747-014-0403-8
Hobson, R. P., Patrick, M. P. H., Hobson, J. A., Crandell, L., Bronfman, E., & Lyons-Ruth, K. (2009). How mothers with borderline personality disorder relate to their year-old infants. The British Journal of Psychiatry, 195, 325-330. doi: 10.1192/bjb.bp.108.060624
Huth-Bocks, A. C., Guyon-Harris, K., Calvert, M., Scott, S., & Ahlfs-Dunn, S. (2016). The Caregiving Helplessness Questionnaire: Evidence for validity and utility with mothers of infants. Infant Mental Health Journal, 37, 208-221. doi: 10.1002/imhj.21559
Kanner, A. D., Coyne, J. C., Schaefer, C., & Lazarus, R. S. (1981). Comparison of two modes of stress measurement, daily hassles and uplifts versus major life events. Journal of Behavioral Medicine, 4, 1-39. doi: 10.1007/BF00844845
Lyons-Ruth, K., Bronfman, E., & Atwood, G. (1999). A relational diathesis model of hostil-helpless states of mind: Expressions in mother-infant interaction. In J. Solomon & C. George (Eds.), Attatchment disorganization (pp. 33-70). New York: Guilford Press.
Lyons-Ruth, K., & Block, D. (1996). The disturbed caregiving system: Relations among childhood trauma, maternal caregiving, and infant affect and attachment. Infant Mental Health Journal, 17, 257-275. Retrieved from https://doi.org/10.1002/(SICI)1097-0355(199623)17:3<257::AID-IMHJ5>3.0.CO;2-L
Lyons-Ruth, K., Bureau, J., Easterbrooks, M. A., Obsuth, I., Hennighausen, K., & Vulliez-Coady, L. (2013). Parsing the construct of maternal insensitivity: Distinct longitudinal pathways associated with early maternal withdrawal. Attachment & Human Development, 15, 562-582. doi: 10.1080/15616734.2013.841051
Lyons-Ruth, K., Bureau, J.-F., Holmes, B., Easterbrooks, M., & Brooks, N. H. (2013). Borderline symptoms and suicidality/self-injury in late adolescence: Prospectively observed relationship correlates in infancy and childhood. Psychiatry Research, 206, 273-281. doi: 10.1016/j.psychres.2012.09.030
Lyons-Ruth, K., & Jacobvitz, D. (2008). Attachment disorganization: Genetic factors, parenting contexts, and developmental transformation from infancy to adulthood. In J. Cassidy & P. R. Shaver (Eds.), Handbook of attachment: Theory, research, and clinical applications (2nd ed., pp. 833-856). New York: Guilford Press.
Lyons-Ruth, K., & Spielman, E. (2004). Disorganized infant attachment strategies and helpless-fearful profiles of parenting: Integrating attachment research with clinical intervention. Infant Mental Health Journal, 25, 318-335. doi: 10.1002/imhj.20008
Madigan, S., Moran, G., Schuengel, C., Pederson, D. R., & Otten, R. (2007). Unresolved maternal attachment representations, disrupted maternal behavior and disorganized attachment in infancy: Links to toddler behavior problems. Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry, 48, 1042-1050. doi: 10.1111/j.1469-7610.2007.01805.x
Marsh, H. W., Hau, K. T., Balla, J. R., & Grayson, D. (1998). Is more ever too much? The number of indicators per factor in confirmatory factor analysis. Multivariate Behavioral Research, 33, 181-220. doi: 10.1207/s15327906mbr3302_1
Moss, E., Bureau, J., St-Laurent, D., & Tarabulsky, G. M. (2011). Understanding disorganized attachment at preschool and school age. In J. Solomon & C. George (Eds.), Disorganized attachment and caregiving (pp. 52-79). New York: Guilford Press.
Moss, E., Cyr, C., & Dubois-Comtois, K. (2004). Attachment at early school age and developmental risk: Examining family contexts and behavior problems of controlling–caregiving, controlling-punitive, and behaviorally disorganized children. Developmental Psychology, 40, 519-532. doi: 10.1037/0012-1649.40.4.519
Negrão, M., Pereira, M., & Soares, I. (2009). Questionário de factores de stress quotidiano. Unpublished manuscript, Universidade do Minho, Braga, Portugal.
Pereira, M., Negrão, M., Soares, I., & Mesman, J. (2015). Predicting harsh discipline in at-risk mothers: The moderating effect of socioeconomic deprivation severity. Journal of Child and Family Studies, 24, 725-733. doi: 10.1007/s10826-013-9883-2
Solomon, J., & George, C. (1996). Defining the caregiving system: Toward a theory of caregiving. Infant Mental Health Journal, 17, 198-216. Retrieved from https://doi.org/10.1002/(SICI)1097-0355(199623)17:3<183::AID-IMHJ1>3.0.CO;2-Q
Solomon, J., & George, C. (2011). Disorganization of maternal caregiving across two generations: The origins of caregiving helplessness. In J. Solomon & C. George (Eds.), Disorganized attachment and caregiving (pp. 25-51). New York: Guilford Press.
Vulliez-Coady, L., Obsuth, I., Torreiro-Casal, M., Ellertsdottir, L., & Lyons-Ruth, K. (2013). Maternal role confusion: Relations to maternal attachment and mother-child interaction from infancy to adolescence. Infant Mental Health Journal, 34, 117-131. doi: 10.1002/imhj.21379
DOI: https://doi.org/10.14417/ap.1544
Refbacks
- There are currently no refbacks.
Nº ERC: 107494 | ISSN (in print): 0870-8231 | ISSN (online): 1646-6020 | Copyright © ISPA - CRL, 2012 | Rua Jardim do Tabaco, 34, 1149-041 Lisboa | NIF: 501313672 | The portal and metadata are licensed under the license Creative Commons CC BY-NC
