Parental beliefs over de motorische ontwikkeling van op tijd en te vroeggeboren kinderen

Abstract

Engels: Introduction. The present study examines differences in parental beliefs on motor development in babies’ first year between parents of full-term and parents of preterm infants. Parental beliefs reflect the view, thoughts, knowledge and values that parents have regarding the development of their child, socialization, upbringing and family situation. Insight in the differences can help in giving the right information to parents and treatment to children to optimize the motor development of children. It was expected that there is a difference in parental beliefs on motor development between parents of full-term and preterm infants. Method. Data from the ‘Parental Beliefs on Motor Development’ questionnaire are used for the present study. The questionnaire consists of propositions with a 6-point scale and two open questions. A total of 110 parents of full-term and 10 parents of preterm infants participated in this study. Case-control was used to create two as equal as possible groups of 10 respondents. Mann-Whitney U tests were used to examine the differences between the groups. Results. No statistic significant differences were found between parents of full-term and preterm infants in the scores. Some remarkable differences were noticed in the individual items and open questions. Conclusion. In this study parents of full-term and parents of preterm infants did not report different parental beliefs. It is important to conduct more research to examine any differences in parental beliefs between parents of full-term and preterm infants. Suggestions for future research and limitations are discussed.