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From:
Rachel Myr <[log in to unmask]>
Reply To:
Lactation Information and Discussion <[log in to unmask]>
Date:
Fri, 6 Jul 2012 18:31:45 +0200
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In Norwegian there is a saying that translates to 'As one shouts into
the forest, one will be answered'.  It means that a bad question gets
a bad answer.

Devising questions to elicit responses which tell you something about
attitudes is harder than many people realize. Questionnaire
development involves numerous kinds of research - first you have to
figure out how answers to questions can measure an attitude, and then
you have to think up a lot of questions and put them to a lot of
people and see whether the answers match what you would expect them to
say based on what you might know by some other means about their
attitudes.  You also need to know that respondents understand the
questions the way you intended them to, which involves different kinds
of testing.

Attitudes and behavior are related but they are far from identical.
So once you know about attitudes, you don't necessarily know anything
helpful about behavior, either. The people who seem to know the most
about how to apply this kind of research most effectively are those
who work in marketing.

I assume the desire to examine health professionals' attitudes to
breastfeeding is motivated by an accomanying desire to improve care to
breastfeeding mothers or to breastfed children or both. In that case
it is really worthwhile to look at what others have done. There is a
questionnaire called the Iowa Infant Feeding Attitude Scale (DE LA
AMORA, A., RUSSELL, D., DUNGY, C. I., LOSCH, M. & DUSDIEKER, L. 1999.
The Iowa Infant Feeding Attitude Scale: Analysis of Reliability and
Validity. Journal of Applied Social Psychology, 1999., 29, 2362-2380.)
which can be used to look at attitudes of mothers or of health
professionals. It has been tested for reliabiliy and validity (i.e.
consistency of answers has been tested, and whether the questions give
information about attitudes to infant feeding rather than information
about something else altogether).  The authors are generous about
sharing it with other researchers.

There is also a scale called the Breastfeeding Self-efficacy Scale,
developed by an Ontario researcher, Cindy Lee Dennis.  I think the
first thing she published about it was in JHL (DENNIS, C. L. 1999.
Theoretical underpinnings of breastfeeding confidence: a self-efficacy
framework. J Hum Lact, 15, 195-201.)  She is still researching this
area and refining the questionnaire, which is intended for use by
mothers but can be useful as a measure of confidence in breastfeeding
in whoever is responding to it.  Confidence in breastfeeding is
closely related to attitudes to breastfeeding too.

cheers and good luck
Rachel Myr
whose entire master's thesis was about reliability testing of a newly
developed questionnaire - so I now know more than I ever imagined
possible about questionnaire research and the gist of what I know is
that I know next to nothing!!

PS if what you want to do is generate discussion and provoke thought
and perhaps a laugh or two in your respondents, you don't need to go
as scientifically to work :-)

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