Validation of the Inventaire du Milieu Familial Questionnaire (French version of the Infant/Toddler HOME) into the Brazilian Portuguese language.

OBJECTIVE: To validate the Brazilian Portuguese version of the Family Environment Assessment questionnaire (Inventaire du Milieu Familial).

METHODS: The validation process was carried out in two stages. First, translation and back-translation were performed, and in the second phase, the questionnaire was applied in 72 families of children between 0 and 24 months for the validation process. The tool consists of the following domains: mother's communication ability; behavior; organization of the physical and temporal environment; collection/quantity of toys; maternal attitude of constant attention toward her baby; diversification of stimuli; baby's behavior. The following was performed for the scale validation: 1 - content analysis (judgment); 2 - construct analysis (factorial analysis - Kaiser-Meyer-Olkin, Bartlett, and Pearson's correlation tests); 3 - criterion analysis (calculation of Cronbach's alpha coefficient, intraclass correlations, and split-half correlations).

RESULTS: The mean age of the children was 9±6.7 months, and of these, 35 (48.6%) were males. Most correlations between items and domains were significant. In the factorial analysis of the scale, Kaiser-Meyer-Olkin values were 0.76, Bartlett's test showed a p-value<0.001, and correlation between items and domains showed a p-value<0.01. Regarding the validity, Cronbach's alpha was 0.92 (95% CI: 0.89-0.94). The intraclass correlation among the evaluators was 0.97 (0.96-0.98) and split-half correlations, r: 0.60, with p<0.01.

CONCLUSIONS: The Portuguese version of the Inventaire du Milieu Familial showed good to excellent performance regarding the assessed psychometric properties.