The investigators conducted a methodological validation of the Turkish version of the Preterm Infant Breastfeeding Behavior Scale (PIBBS) among preterm infants and their mothers. The cohort included infants with gestational ages of 33 to 37 weeks who were hospitalized in the Neonatal Intensive Care Units and Gynecology and Obstetrics wards at Bursa City Hospital. The study team used a Demographic/Obstetric and Neonatal Characteristics Form alongside the PIBBS and the Bristol Breastfeeding Assessment Scale (BBAT) to collect data. The abstract reports these enrollment criteria and instruments; it does not provide the sample size, exact inclusion/exclusion criteria beyond gestational age, or the timing of assessments—those methodological specifics were not included in the source abstract.
Content validity was quantified in the abstract. Item-level Content Validity Index (CVI) values ranged from 0.89 to 1.00, while the scale-level CVI was reported as 0.963. These figures indicate that the expert reviewers judged items to be relevant and representative of the construct being measured. The study team also assessed concurrent validity by comparing PIBBS total scores with scores on the BBAT; data indicated a strong positive correlation between the two instruments (r = 0.868; p < 0.001). That correlation suggests that PIBBS scores aligned closely with an established breastfeeding assessment tool in this clinical sample.
Internal consistency for the Turkish PIBBS was reported as a Cronbach’s alpha of 0.893. That coefficient, as provided in the abstract, reflects high internal reliability across scale items in the examined cohort. The authors also reported interrater/item agreement via Kappa statistics; Kappa values for each PIBBS item were between 0.805 and 0.933, which the study team presented as substantial to almost-perfect agreement. For temporal reliability, the first and second PIBBS measurement scores (test and retest) demonstrated a very strong positive correlation (r = 0.841; p < 0.001). The abstract therefore documents multiple complementary reliability indices: internal consistency, item-level agreement, and test–retest stability.
The abstract lists the three instruments used to gather study data: the Demographic/Obstetric and Neonatal Characteristics Form, the PIBBS, and the BBAT. The PIBBS served as the translated instrument under validation; the BBAT functioned as the comparator for concurrent validity testing. The source did not disclose in the abstract how raters were trained, how many raters participated, the interval between test and retest, or whether assessments were performed at bedside or under standardized conditions. Those operational details are not reported in the abstract and would require full-text access for confirmation.
The authors concluded that health professionals who care for preterm infants can be trained to use the PIBBS to evaluate sucking skills, and they suggested broader use of the tool in clinical practice. The abstract frames that recommendation around the presented validity and reliability metrics. The abstract itself does not specify a training curriculum, implementation pathway, or the sample size underpinning the psychometric analyses; it also does not report potential study limitations such as generalizability beyond the single-center Bursa cohort or performance in more immature preterm infants (below 33 weeks). These unanswered details are explicit gaps in the abstract and would need to be addressed by consulting the full manuscript for operational specifics, sample characteristics, and any additional limitations the authors reported there.
Limitations and unanswered questions drawn from the abstract are concrete: the sample size and rater procedures were not stated; test–retest interval was not given; and the scope of validity testing beyond concurrent correlation with BBAT (for example, construct validity via factor analysis) is not reported. Clinicians and researchers considering adoption of the Turkish PIBBS should seek the full text for these methodological details before implementation, and training programs should define rater qualification and retest intervals based on the full-methods report rather than the abstract alone.