Shaylea Badovinac1, Hannah Gennis1, Rebecca Pillai Riddell1
1) Canada
Background and aims: The OUCHI Tool is a checklist of eight suboptimal parent behaviours that increase infant distress during vaccination. While the OUCHI Tool has been shown to be associated with parental sensitivity and infant pain-related distress post-needle at 12 months, our goal was to investigate whether 12-month OUCHI scores predicted parental sensitivity and child pain-related distress at preschool age.
Methods: The current study used existing data (n = 142) from a longitudinal cohort that video-recorded parent-preschooler dyads during routine vaccination appointments. Suboptimal parenting behaviours during 12-month vaccinations were coded using the OUCHI Tool. At preschool-age, vaccinations were coded for pain-related distress 1, 2, and 3 minutes post-needle (FLACC; Merkel et al., 1997). Parental sensitivity was also assessed at preschool-age (MBQS; Maternal Behavior Q-Sort; Pederson et al., 1990). A regression model was used to evaluate whether 12-month OUCHI scores predicted pain-related distress and parental sensitivity at preschool-age.
Results: No relationship was found between 12- month OUCHI scores and preschooler pain-related distress at 1, 2, or 3 minutes post-needle, or parental sensitivity assessed at preschool-age.
Conclusions: While the OUCHI Tool has been shown to be concurrently related to pain-related distress and parental sensitivity at 12 months, it does not appear to be predictive of pain-related distress or parental sensitivity at preschool-age. The OUCHI Tool is meant to provide a quick indication of distress-promoting parent behaviour. Thus, the post-vaccination observation period may be too brief to provide predictive convergent or divergent validity with items measured at the preschool vaccination. Moreover, due to the increasing self-regulatory capacity of preschool-aged children, it is likely that preschoolers’ own self-regulatory strategies are more influential than previous caregiver soothing behaviours in predicting pain-related distress.
Acknowledgements: Our funding sources include: SB- SSHRC; HG- OGS, Meighen Wright Graduate Scholarship; RPR- CIHR (#524563/524432), York Research Chair, CFI (#532009).
