Assessing mother‐to‐infant attachment: the Italian adaptation of a self‐report questionnaire

The mother‐to‐infant relationship is usually assessed by behavioural observation. In order to evaluate mothers' emotional and cognitive response to their infants, Condon and Corkindale [(1998) The assessment of parent‐to‐infant attachment: development of a self‐report questionnaire instrument, Journal of Reproductive and Infant Psychology, 16, 57–76] have developed a self‐administered questionnaire. The aim of the present study is the Italian validation of the scale. The questionnaire contains 19 items each rated on a 5‐point scale. A sample of women with infants between 2 and 4 months of age were recruited at two postnatal wards in Genoa (Italy). Construct validity was assessed by administering two additional questionnaires: the Symptom Rating Test by Kellner and Sheffield and the Early Infancy Temperament Questionnaire by Medoff‐Cooper, Carey and Mc Devitt. A total of 210 women were evaluated. The distribution of scores tended to be skewed towards higher attachment scores and the range was 59 to 95. The...