Health Sciences
Me and My Baby (MaMB) Questionnaire
The Me and My Baby (MaMB) questionnaire is a new 11 item-tool designed to measure parent-infant bonding (a parent’s emotional connection and feeling toward their baby). The MaMB was developed for use in research as well as universal health settings to identify dyads in need of additional support or interventions.
Background
There has been a paucity of available tools to assess the parent-infant relationship, specifically bonding. Relevant NICE guidelines have highlighted the need for further research to establish reliable tools for assessment, particularly for parents of children under the age of 1 year (NICE, 2012, 2015).
In response to the paucity of available measures, and practitioners concerns around previous tools, we developed the Me and My Baby (MaMB) tool. The MaMB has been piloted in universal health services with mothers to evaluate its feasibility for use in routine practise (Bywater et al., 2022; Blower et al., 2020). Health visitors could successfully administer the MaMB in universal services, and the MaMB appeared to be acceptable to parents. The MaMB is therefore considered to be feasible for use in routine practice.
However, the psychometric properties of the MaMB suggested there may be difficulties in differentiating between respondents, and that reduced response categories (from four to three) may increase variation across items (Bywater et al., 2022). The latest version of the MaMB (V2) incorporates these changes following the psychometric study. We plan to submit funding applications to conduct further work on this version of the tool’s psychometrics, and explore its utility and performance in wider roll-out. We are interested to hear from potential participating partners and services to undertake this work, please contact us at mamb-project@york.ac.uk if you might be interested in this.
Please see our short video summarising the background and development of the MaMB.
How and where it is currently used
The MaMB is currently included as a self-complete measure in various cohort surveys, in collaboration with Bradford Institute of Health Research (BIHR). This enables the exploration of the tool’s performance and psychometric properties at various timepoints, with both mothers and fathers. The MaMB has also been administered as part of routine service with health visitors.
The MaMB and the child version (Me and My Child; MaMC) are currently being used in the Supporting MumS (SMS) study. We also have interest from infant mental health teams in Bradford and other services further afield, as well as an interest from researchers to use the tool in their studies.
Using the MaMB
Examples of where the MaMB could be used are:
- Family assessment
- Screening
- Evaluating outcomes
- Research studies.
If you would like to use the MaMB, or would like more information about the MaMB, please fill out this form to gain access to our user manual and to the questionnaire.
Contact
For further information please contact mamb-project@york.ac.uk.