Inventory “Family Organization and Negative Beliefs” in Maternal Depression: Development and Psychometrics Indicators

Abstract

This study aimed to describe the development and the empirical evidence of reliability and validity of an instrument that proposes to assess, in the context of maternal depression, family organization resources and cumulative risks in families with school-age children. The items were constructed based on protection processes and developmental outcomes. The Inventory was conducted during a semi-structured interview with a convenience sample: 100 mothers of school-age children, 50 of them diagnosed with recurrent depression and 50 without psychiatric disorders. Agreement analysis between the coding of interviews by independent evaluators indicated values higher than 85%. Based on the exploratory factor analysis, the final composition of the instrument was 31 items, distributed in the dimensions Family Organization and Negative Beliefs, with Cronbach’s alpha value of, respectively, 0.72 and 0.87. Statistically significant differences between the groups with and without depression sustained the discriminant validity of the instrument, enabling its use as a guiding resource for interventions.