Self-efficacy in Infant Care Scale: Development and psychometric testing

The Self-Efficacy in Infant Care Scale (SICS) is a self-administered measure to assess maternal judgments about the ability to care for the baby during the first year of life. The SICS was initially composed of 67 items and was tested on 397 Thai mothers with infants < 12 months old. The test demonstrated adequate internal consistency and test-retest reliability. Factor analysis yielded 42 items with five dimensions of self-efficacy in infant care. With an acceptable model fit using confirmatory factor analysis, a final version of the SICS contained 40 items with four dimensions of self-efficacy in infant care: developmental promotion, general health care, safety, and diet. This preliminary test for the psychometric properties revealed that the SICS has potential uses for both research and clinical purposes. However, the model selected must be viewed as tentative; further refinement is suggested.