Assessment of psychometric properties of the Postpartum Bonding Questionnaire (PBQ) in Spanish mothers

The Postpartum Bonding Questionnaire (PBQ) was developed to assess mother-infant bonding disturbances in the postpartum period. The aim of this study was to examine the psychometric properties of the Spanish version of the PBQ in a sample of Spanish postpartum women. Eight hundred forty mothers were recruited in the postpartum visit (4–6 weeks after delivery): 513 from a gynecology unit (forming the general population sample) and 327 mothers from a perinatal psychiatry program (forming the clinical sample). All women were assessed by means of the Edinburgh Postnatal Depression Scale (EPDS) and the PBQ. Neither the original four-factor structure nor alternative structures (Reck et al. 2006; Wittkowski et al. 2010) were replicated by the confirmatory factor analyses. An exploratory factor analysis showed a four-factor solution. The Schmid-Leiman transformation found a general factor that accounted for 61 % of the variance of the PBQ. Bonding impairment showed higher associations with depressive symptomatology in both samples. The Spanish version of the PBQ showed adequate psychometric properties for use with clinical and general populations of Spanish postpartum women. The results suggest that the PBQ could be summarized by a general factor and confirm the utility of the use of the total score for detecting bonding impairment.