Identifying antenatal and post-natal factors that influence and moderate the development of infant and early child temperament in a large ethnically diverse cohort
Final Report Abstract
The main aim of my research was to identify factors that influence the development of infant and child temperament during the prenatal period. Data for the analyses came from the Growing Up in New Zealand study, which is a population-representative multi-ethnic pregnancy cohort of roughly 6,800 women from the Auckland region initiated in 2009/10. Data access requires a multi-stage procedure, meaning that access to the full database was granted in January 2020, about five months after taking up the research fellowship. Thus, I worked on a related project with the aim of validating the factor structure of the short version of the child behavior questionnaire (CBQ VSF) in this multi-ethnic population, where I identified an altered factor structure, which fitted the data better than the originally proposed factor structure. Previously published results on homo- and heterotypic continuity between infant and child temperament dimensions could be replicated for this new structure. It is possible that the CBQ VSF could be reduced further and still capture meaningful dimensions, but caution may be needed if looking to use the CBQ VSF to make between-group ethnic comparisons of absolute temperament scores, as I identified metric but not scalar invariance between ethnic groups. After data access had been granted, I started to work on my main research objectives, where I identified several prenatal factors, which were significantly associated with infant temperament after adjustment for potential confounders, namely maternal personality (big five), prenatal stress experience, pregnancy diet, smoking, alcohol intake, and nausea experience, as well as prenatal physical activity and body mass index. One of the strengths of this analysis was the use of path analysis, which allowed for the estimation of direct and indirect effects. Although the identified associations are not strong and should not be overvalued as being deterministic of infant temperament, they support the existence of the developmental origins of temperament, and that prenatal stress, maternal diet, and other health behaviors play a part in them.
