Paternal attitudes toward breast feeding: the development of a tool

The purpose of this study was to explore the attitudes of fathers' toward breast feedings and develop a tool by which these attitudes may be assessed. Three major steps were involved in the formulations of this rudimentary tool. The initial step involved interviewing six different groups of people to elicit ideas and feelings toward the practice of breast feeding. Secondly, the responses were synthesized into 168 statements and then categorized by a panel of experts. The responses were then sorted into seven specific categories by eight individuals. Though this process, the statements were synthesized into a total of 70 items of ten in each category. The final process was concerned with the subjective evaluation of the statements by 81 married people in the form of a Q sort test. The results indicated the sample to be homogenous with regard to race, religion, and place of residence. Diversity was shown in age, educational level, income, and age of youngest child. Of the 70 statements used in the Guttman scale analysis, 24 were identified to have a potential to be scaled. The focus of further study should be to develop a more objective means by which a person can be rated in relation to his attitude toward breast feeding. One might repeat the study on a large sample with diversity in age, religion, race and socio-economic status. Then one might assess the identified scalable items and check the validity and reliability against know groups and pragmatic predictive tests.