Validation of scores from the Parent-child interaction scale, WECS and WECS-P

While in the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit (NICU), the preterm infant's brain develops optimally through nurturing and parenting. A healthy early parent-infant relationship may have a direct impact upon children's global development. Current tools to measure the parent-infant relationship are not well-fitted for parents of preterm infants because it requires the preterm infant to be competent in feeding and is lengthy. For this reason, the Welch Emotional Connection Scale (WECS), used to code a videotaped parent-infant interaction, was developed to offer a straightforward and simple measure of the parent-infant relationship which does not require a specific competence from the infant. In parallel, a parental form of the WECS (WECS-P), has been developed for a subjective self-reported measure of the parent-infant relationship. The combination of a subjective measure (WECS-P) and objective measure (WECS) may be beneficial to optimize the evaluation of the parent-infant relationship as it is based on both behaviours and emotions. The aim of this study is to evaluate the convergent validity of scores from the WECS and WECS-P.