Abstract
The purpose of this study was to evaluate the reliability and validity of the Maternal Attachment Inventory Japanese Version (MAI-J). The 26 item MAI-J is a self-report questionnaire designed to measure maternal affectionate attachment to infants. The Maternal Attachment Inventory original version was translated into Japanese and then back-translated into English using translators not involved in the original translation. The subjects were 255 mothers of healthy infants
The results demonstrated the MAI-J to be highly adequate internal consistency reliability, with a Cronbach's alpha coefficient of 0.92, and for stability, with a test-retest reliability of 0.84. Content validity was established at 100%. Construct validity was not adequately supported, although the results of the principal component analysis and the factor analysis showed MAI-J to be an essentially one dimensional scale, and there was a moderate correlation of 0.63 with the scale of What Being the Parent of a New Baby is Like-Reversed-Japanese Version. Measure of concurrent validity was not adequately supported, showing a correlation of 0.38 with the scale of Feeling Towards Infant.
The results showed the MAI-J to be highly adequate reliability but did not adequately support validity. Therefore further testing of the scale is necessary.
