A Preliminary Examination of the Knowledge of Normative Infant Development (KNID) Inventory Using Structural Equation Modeling

Structural equation modeling is a general statistical model that combines confirmatory factor analysis, multiple regression, and path analysis. It provides a comprehensive approach for testing the adequacy of measures, but virtually no applications of this approach exist in the social work literature. This article presents a new measure of parental knowledge of normative infant development, it describes the use of structural equation modeling to analyze the results of a study of 273 mothers designed to test this measure, and it discusses general considerations in the use of structural equation modeling to test measures. Results indicate that the Knowledge of Normative Infant Development (KNID) inventory measures two uncorrelated factors, early and late expectations of infant development. Each of these factors is distinct from but correlated positively with maltreating expectations, as predicted. Contrary to predictions, neither factor is correlated with family conflict.