Assessment of Psychometric Properties of the Postpartum Bonding Questionnaire (PBQ) in Jordanian Mothers

Abstract

Background: Mother to infant bonding is the most important process in the puerperium, where many instruments have been designed to screen for mother-infant bonding issues. In this study, we will translate and validate the Postpartum Bonding Questionnaire (PBQ) to the Arabic and to measure the mother-infant bonding in a sample of Jordanian mothers.

Materials and methods: This sample is a representative sample taken from multiple centers in Amman, Jordan. Post-partum lady who give a birth to a live healthy baby, regardless the mood of the delivery, who have been discharged with their babies home. Women with multiple pregnancies were also included. We calculated reliability indices and relevant statistics using SPSS.

Results: A total of 120 participants included in this study. The mean age for the included sample was 28.1 (±6.3) years. Scale internal consistency measured via Cronbach’s alpha is 0.720. Average intraclass correlation coefficient for single measure is 0.067 (CI 0.045 to 0.097). Mean score for the 4 factors of the questionnaire were: Factor 1: 17.43 (±3.95), factor 2: 4.10 (±3.98), factor 3: 7.99 (±2.39), factor 4: 0.37 (±0.94).

Conclusion: We translated and validated an Arabic version of the Postpartum Bonding Questionnaire (PBQ), an easy and widely used instrument to measure mother-infant bonding disorders. We observed a high frequency of bonding disorder among a Jordanian sample.