title: Assessing infant health promotion: a cross-cultural comparison.
abstract: The purpose of this cross-cultural, correlational study was to evaluate two popular clinical/research assessment tools, the NCAST Teaching Scale and the Home Observation Measurement of the Environment (HOME) Inventory, as measures of infant health promotion behaviors for low-income, foreign-born Hispanic mothers in the United States. Based on the assumption that both measures tap universal attributes of the mother-infant relationship, it was hypothesized that maternal performance for the study group and a comparison group of U.S.-born, low-income mothers would be similar. Comparable performance on the NCAST Teaching Scale included a full range of scores, including the capacity to identify mothers most in need of clinical intervention. Study fundings supported the clinical use of this assessment scale with mothers represented by the study sample. Consistently lower scores by the foreign-born Hispanic mothers on the HOME Inventory led to the conclusion that the instrument may not tap cultural universals in the mother-infant relationship.
authors.affiliation: College of Nursing and Health Science, George Mason University, USA.
authors.forename: K F
authors.initials: KF
authors.lastname: Gaffney
authors.forename: M P
authors.initials: MP
authors.lastname: Kodadek
authors.forename: M T
authors.initials: MT
authors.lastname: Meuse
authors.forename: G B
authors.initials: GB
authors.lastname: Jones
mesh_terms: D000293:Adolescent; D000328:Adult; D003466:Cultural Characteristics; D019317:Evidence-Based Medicine; D005260:Female; D006293:Health Promotion / Q000379:methods*; D006630:Hispanic or Latino; D006801:Humans; D007223:Infant; D008875:Middle Aged; D014481:United States