General procedure

Once participants had given permission for the researcher to contact them, an initial telephone call was made so that the researcher could answer any questions the mother might have and to check that the criteria for the study were met before arranging the first home visit. Arrangements were also discussed about who would look after children while the mother was engaged in a play session with another child. All data collection took place within the home and all visits were undertaken by the researcher. Each visit lasted approximately an hour and a half. At the

beginning of the first visit, after discussion of the study, mothers were asked to sign a consent form if they agreed to participate. At the end of each visit, mothers were given a £10 retail voucher to thank them for their participation and asked if they would like a DVD of their play sessions sent to them. Mothers were asked at the end of the first visit whether they could be contacted again to find out if they wanted to take part in the second time point of the study. All mothers agreed to be

contacted again.

Regarding information given to participants, mothers were not explicitly told that the study was investigating maternal mind-mindedness to avoid potential bias which would invalidate the results. Mothers were told that the study was about mother- child relationships and was investigating whether mothers’ descriptions of their children and their interactions were more influenced by the relationship, or by mothers’ characteristics or by other things such as the child’s temperament.

Debriefing was carried out in stages. After each home visit, participants were given a general debrief and told that more information including specific aims would be

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given after data collection had ended. After their final home visit, mothers were asked if they would like a summary of the study sent to them. This summary, including details about mind-mindedness, was sent to mothers by letter or email after all data collection had taken place. Finally, a summary of study findings was also sent later on once the data were analysed.

4.5 Measures

Measures were selected, adapted or developed for the study as appropriate. All measures will be described briefly here including a short introduction to the

development of new measures. Full descriptions, including a detailed development of the measures where appropriate, will be given in the relevant chapters listed in Table 4.4.

Table 4.4. Measures: existing, adapted and developed

Chapter Measure Type of measure

5 Mind-mindedness:

 Representational measure

 Interactional measure

Existing measure but enhanced coding

Adapted measure for new age range

6 Psychological mindedness measure New measure 7 Temperament and behaviour measures:

 Maternal report

 Observational measure

Existing measures New measure

Representational measure of mind-mindedness (Meins et al., 1998)

Mothers were asked to describe their two children and their partner separately. Their answers were audio-recorded and subsequently transcribed and coded. The representational measure of mind-mindedness was devised by the authors to be used with mothers with children of preschool age and above so no adaptations were deemed necessary. However, an enhancement to the measure was developed, including a list of mental attributes and behavioural attributes, to aid consistency of coding.

Interactional measure of mind-mindedness (Meins et al., 2001)

Mothers were asked to play with their child just as they might do if they had some free time together. A 15-minute play session was filmed with mother-older sibling

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and mother-younger sibling and subsequently transcribed and coded. The

interactional measure of mind-mindedness was devised by the authors to be used with infants up to the age of 12 months. This measure was used with an older age group in this study and consequently this was piloted through play sessions with three mothers and their children in order to establish whether adaptations were necessary for the new age group. Reliability of the measure was investigated with two second coders and any necessary adaptations for this older age group were made by expanding the coding scheme.

Psychological mindedness measure

A measure which captures mothers’ general tendency to reason or speculate in psychological terms was devised with mothers being scored by what they project onto ambiguous images. Mothers were asked to tell a story about a photograph. Two photographs were shown at Time 1 and two different photographs were shown at Time 2. The stories were audio recorded and subsequently transcribed and coded. The measure was piloted on four people, a coding scheme was written, reliability was examined through the use of a confusion matrix, and adaptations were made to the coding scheme as required.

Child temperament and behaviour: maternal report measures

Maternal report of younger siblings’ temperament and behaviour was measured using two questionnaires:

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The short form of the 195-item Children’s Behavior Questionnaire (CBQ;

Rothbart, Ahadi, & Hershey, 1994; Rothbart, Ahadi, Hershey, & Fisher, 2001) is a caregiver report measure designed to provide an assessment of temperament in children aged 3 to 8 years. This version has 94 items and 15 scales, with 13 of these scales mapping onto three factors: Surgency, Negative Affectivity and Effortful Control. Mothers were asked to rate their child on a 7-point scale ranging from 1 (extremely untrue of your child) to 7 (extremely true of your child). An option of “Not Applicable” was provided in case the child had not been observed in the situation described.

 6WUHQJWKVDQG'LIILFXOWLHV4XHVWLRQQDLUH6'4*RRGPDQ The SDQ is a well-validated caregiver report measure which matches onto children’s behavioural and emotional difficulties as well as strengths and prosocial functioning. Two versions of the SDQ were used in the study with the

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version being sent dependent on the age of the child in question. The first was designed to be used by mothers assessing children from 4- to 16-years-old and the second, a slightly modified version, was designed to be used by mothers assessing children aged between 3 years and 4 years. Both versions have 25 items which map onto five scales with five items each: emotional symptoms scale, conduct problems scale, hyperactivity scale, peer problems scale and prosocial scale. A total difficulties score is then calculated by summing the first four subscales. Mothers were asked to rate their child on a 3-point scale

depending on whether a behaviour was “not true”, “somewhat true” or “certainly true” of their child.

Child temperament: observational measure

A 15-minute play session with the younger sibling (also used to observe

interactional mind-mindedness) plus a tidy-up task, where the children were asked to tidy up the toys into a case at the end of the play session, was filmed and

subsequently coded. An observational coding scheme was developed to assess the younger siblings’ temperament which coded behaviour against selected

temperament dimensions taken from the SF-CBQ (Putnam & Rothbart, 2006). The Laboratory Temperament Assessment Battery: Preschool version (Lab-TAB; Goldsmith, Reilly, Lemery, Longley, & Prescott, 1999) was adapted and piloted on three mothers and their children and the reliability of the measure and coding scheme was investigated.