A parent’s working models (WMs) of parenting and caregiving may influence the physiologic regulation and subsequent growth and development of an infant with a complex congenital heart defect (CCHD). Physiologic regulation associated with these infant outcomes operates through the parasympathetic nervous system (PNS) and is indexed by heart rate variability (HRV). A WM is constructed of expectations, intentions, goals, and strategies, and operates dynamically in goal-directed activity. Little is known about the WMs of parents of infants with a CCHD. Without knowledge of types of WMs, antecedents and outcomes of parental mental processing of parenting and caregiving issues cannot be studied, and interventions cannot be tailored to a family’s needs. The aim of this poster is to describe the design and conduct of the methods used to develop a typology from longitudinal, qualitative data and mixed-model analysis of qualitative and quantitative (HRV) data for assessment of the usefulness of the typology. Infants whose parents have parenting and caregiving WMs higher in adaptive qualities should have higher HRV, indicating greater responsive to internal and environmental stimuli. Semi-structured interview data from 5 parents, all primary caregivers, and their infants with a CCHD, collected at 1 and 4 months of age, will be used to illustrate the processes of WM typology construction. Electro-cardiographic data, collected to study HRV during feeding and pre- and post-feeding conditions, will be analyzed with power spectral analysis. Measures of high frequency (HF) HRV, reflecting PNS activity, and low frequency (LF) HRV, reflecting both sympathetic and PNS activity, will be obtained. A multinomial, mixed-method analytic strategy will be used to explore the relationship of WM types with measures of HF, LF, and the ratio of HF/LF HRV. The implications of the study for application of the typology of WMs in future intervention studies will be described.
Session #1219 - Poster Session I
The 29th Annual MNRS Research Conference (April 1-4, 2005)