The Effect of Mothers' Participation in a Neonatal Assessment on their Perceptions of their Infants

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to determine if mothers' perceptions of their infants would be significantly increased after they participated in an assessment of their infants' behaviors. A quasiexperimental design was used with a convenience sample of 17 postpartum mothers who had uncomplicated vaginal deliveries, and their normal full-term infants. · Mothers were ass.igned to either a control or experimental group at the time of delivery. There were four primiparous and 13 multi·parous mothers in this sample. , The mothers completed the Neonatal Perception Inventory, the NPI, during the first phase of the study when their infants were 24-48 hours old. After completing the NPI, the experimental group participated in an assessment of the infants' behaviors by using the Mother's Assessment of the Behaviors of Her Infant Scale. The, second phase of the study involved a home visit when each infant· was four we.eks of age. The mothers again completed the NPI tool. The Mann-Whitney U test for differences in. mothers' perceptions of their infants (as measured by the NPI) for ·the control and experimental groups resulted in a W of 62 (~ = .2087) for the first NPI data, and a W of 47 (~ = .2384) for the second NPI data. These non-significant results can probably be related to the mothers' past experiences and the limitations of the NPI tool.