Maternal Attitudes and Infant/Child Temperament: Questionnaire Assessment and Applied Intervention
Bibliographic record
Abstract
The importance of the parent-child relationship is reflected in a great deal of research, theory, and public health programs. The complexity of these relationships creates methodological challenges for researchers and clinicians alike. One strong predictor of positive parenting behavior is Parent Self-Efficacy (PSE): the parent’s own confidence in their ability to successfully parent their child. It is far more practical to assess PSE, which can be measured by questionnaire, than to observe and assess parent-child interactions directly, leading many professionals to select PSE as an outcome assessment for parenting programs. \nChild temperament is another essential consideration for parenting, as temperamentally vulnerable children are more likely to elicit negative interactions and are also more adversely affected by them (e.g., Lorber & Egeland, 2011; Slagt et al., 2016). Limited resources often preclude the use of observational measures of temperament as well, so many professionals rely on parent report via freely available questionnaires (e.g., Putnam et al., 2006, 2013). \nGiven widespread reliance on these questionnaire measures, consideration of psychometric characteristics, applicability of items, and other potential influences on parents’ responses is crucial. Indeed, substantial discrepancies between parental report and laboratory observational measures of temperament have been documented (e.g., Seifer et al., 2004). \nIn this dissertation, I investigate methodological issues and program effectiveness in the field of temperament and parenting. In Chapter 1, I present theory and research on the function and measurement of parental attitudes and child temperament. In Chapter 2, I investigate the underlying factor structure of measures of maternal attitude and child temperament. Findings suggest the primary importance of child shyness in mothers’ response patterns. In Chapters 3 and 4 I present results of a parenting program evaluation using these questionnaire measures. In Chapter 5, I use multi-method assessment of child temperament to determine whether maternal attitudes may account for discrepancies between observational and questionnaire-based temperament scores. These analyses show unexpected associations among measures and substantial discordance between measures of each temperament characteristic, which were not explained by maternal attitudes. I discuss these results in Chapter 6, including recommendations for further research and public health initiatives.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.013 | 0.012 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.002 | 0.001 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.001 | 0.002 |
| Research integrity | 0.001 | 0.002 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.007 | 0.002 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".