Abstract

First, we validated across different samples the factor structure of the SVC-24: a short behavioural rating scale for parents of children 2-to-6 months old. Second, we studied how the factors of infant behaviour changed in different age groups. Finally, descriptive analyses were conducted to examine how both raters' education and infants' gender affect mother ratings of behavioural components. The SVC-24 was indeed administered to the following independent samples: (b) 150 mothers collected at private health services; (a) 170 mothers collected at the public health services. Separate Principal Components Analyses were carried out. Four factors with high comparability coefficients were retained, orthogonally rotated and properly identified in both the samples. These results support the hypothesis that the SVC-24 measures stable and independent components of infant behaviour, tentatively labelled: Shared Knowledge, Pleasant Interaction, Not-Reactivity and Irritability-Consolability. Trend Analysis of orthogonal factor scores by age groups showed that: a) the Shared Knowledge monotonically increased as a function of age; b) the Pleasant Interaction increased up to 3 months, being stable later; c) the Irritability-Consolability factor slightly increased up to 5 months, decreasing later. Descriptive analyses revealed that most of mothers' ratings are relatively unaffected by educational level of the raters and infants' gender as well.