The concurrent validity of the Child and Adult Relationship Observational tool (CARO) for mothers with additional health and social care needs and Clinical Research Portfolio

Drummond, Julie (2020) The concurrent validity of the Child and Adult Relationship Observational tool (CARO) for mothers with additional health and social care needs and Clinical Research Portfolio. D Clin Psy thesis, University of Glasgow.

Abstract

Background:
Mother-infant interactions, especially in the first two years of a child’s life, have been consistently linked to a wide variety of developmental outcomes for children. Depression is commonly associated with less sensitive mother-infant interactions. Currently, most systems used to assess such interactions are complex and are therefore not a helpful aid to primary care mental health professionals who wish to monitor mother-infant relationships.

Aims:
The primary aim was to establish how the Child and Adult Relationship Observation tool (CARO), corresponds with another measure of mother-infant interaction (CARE-Index), which has known predictive validity, in a sample of mothers identified as having additional health and social care needs in pregnancy and who score highly on depression six months post-partum. The relationship between maternal sensitivity and depression, measured using the subscale of the Hospital Anxiety and Depression Scale (HADS-D; Bjelland et al., 2002), was also explored.

Method:
This study used the data from 30 mothers from the THRIVE trial (Trial of healthy relationship initiatives for the very early years).Ten of the highest scoring mothers on depression at follow-up (six months post-partum) from each of the three study arms were selected. Videos of 3-5 minutes in length, which had already been rated using the CARE-index, were analysed using CARO. Concurrent validity with the CARE-Index, and any relationship between depression and the two tools used to assess mother-infant interaction, was explored using Spearman’s correlations.

Results:
The association between CARO and the CARE-Index was non-significant
((rs)=.119; p=.530).There was a moderate, positive relationship between CARE-Index and depression scores ((rs)= .407; p=.026) and no significant relationship between CARO and depression scores ((rs)= .221; p=.241).

Conclusion:
CARO does not have good concurrent validity with the CARE-index. Other psychometric properties of CARO require to be assessed to establish the extent of its clinical utility.

• Item Type: Thesis (D Clin Psy)
• Qualification Level: Doctoral
• Keywords: mother-infant interaction, validity; measure, Child and Adult Relationship Observational tool, CARE-index, mother and baby unit, systematic review, psychological outcomes, postnatal mental health, quality assessment, mothers.
• Subjects: B Philosophy. Psychology. Religion > BF Psychology
• Colleges/Schools: College of Medical Veterinary and Life Sciences > School of Health & Wellbeing > Mental Health and Wellbeing
• Supervisor's Name: Thompson, Dr. Lucy
• Date of Award: 2020
• Depositing User: Ms Julie Drummond
• Unique ID: glathesis:2020-81707
• Copyright: Copyright of this thesis is held by the author.
• Date Deposited: 26 Oct 2020 11:25
• Last Modified: 06 Sep 2022 08:41
• Thesis DOI: 10.5525/gla.thesis.81707
• URI: https://theses.gla.ac.uk/id/eprint/81707