Barbara Conrad

What does the NCATS measure

The purpose of this study was to examine what aspects of the mother-child relationship are measured by the Nursing Child Assessment Teaching Scale (NCATS). A racially heterogeneous sample of 128 mothers completed questionnaires measuring maternal depression, parenting self-efficacy, knowledge of developmental and parenting principles, and perceived difficult toddler temperament. Mothers and children were also videotaped during home visits while completing two teaching tasks that were later scored using the NCATS. NCATS Parent subscale scores were significantly related to maternal knowledge and education but unrelated to depression and self-efficacy. Child subscale scores were unrelated to all of the study variables, including perceived difficult temperament. Significant differences were noted among African-American, Hispanic, and white mothers. The findings suggest that the NCATS taps cognitive factors more reliably than affective factors underlying the mother-child relationship and the cognitive factors may be culturally biased.

Maternal depressive symptoms and homeless children's mental health: Risk and resiliency

Homelessness places children at risk for mental health problems. Maternal depression may influence child outcomes through its effects on the mother-child relationship. This study examined the relationship between maternal depressive symptoms and child mental health in a sample of homeless mothers and their preschool children. The relationship between maternal depressive symptoms and child behavior problems was not significant. The data suggest that mental health services for homeless mothers and their young children are needed. However, 70% of the children in this sample had no behavior problems. Their adaptation reflects resilience to extraordinary stressors and provides a unique opportunity to understand child resiliency.

Designing interventions in psychosocial research.

There is little guidance in the literature on how to design cost-effective interventions for preventing or treating psychosocial health care problems. Four sources of information are described for developing interventions that are based on a strong theoretical and empirical foundation: (1) an explicit theory for intervention, (2) supporting descriptive data, (3) an evaluation of possible intervention strategies that are consistent with the theory and the supporting data, and (4) focus groups to examine the feasibility and external validity of the intervention before formal testing.

Temperament in toddlerhood

The purpose of this article is to describe how toddler temperament can affect parent-child relations using a goodness-of-fit framework. Nursing considerations for assessing toddler temperament with families and providing parental guidance for managing toddlers with difficult temperament styles are discussed. Emphasis is placed on helping parents to understand their toddlers temperament-based behavior and to devise strategies that maximize compatibility between the toddlers temperament and parental expectations.